Picture of You
by latbfan
Summary: Extended and missing scenes from S1. I binged the show in greedy gulps, and the stories are coming out of order. Sorry about that. The episode will be noted in the A/N.
1. Picture of You

**Picture of You**

* * *

_A/N: I admit to never reading the Daredevil comics, so sorry, but I just finished binging the Netflix series and when the Muse calls, I'd be silly not to take heed. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I lifted dialogue from the episode for this expanded Foggy POV from "World on Fire" (Episode 1.5). It's kind of my thing... I hope you enjoy this extended look at Foggy and Karen's "date."_

* * *

Foggy likes to think it's a date. A real one, that is, and not a joke even though Karen laughed when he asked what it was. Not an obligatory pity dinner, either, or hungry necessity or determined senior-citizen coercion. He knows Karen didn't intend for it to be a date, but he can tell she's enjoying herself. She makes quite the picture, leaned towards him at the small table in the flickering candlelight. He pretends it's romantic ambiance, not the ugly result of a bullying slumlord. He wants the flush on her cheeks to mirror his hopeful yet nervous anticipation rather than reflect the exotic spices in the food or her embarrassment because she has questions she's nervous about asking.

Because they always have questions about Matt.

Foggy doesn't blame her. He was curious too, once upon a time. Slipping on the smoked glasses and closing his eyes, trying to walk around their small room without tripping over anything. Running his fingertips over Matt's braille textbooks and trying to feel how on earth he could distinguish all those little bumps that felt more like zits than words. Covertly following him around the grocery store to see how he knew which toothpaste to buy, which beer. Opening his wallet to see the way the different bills were folded so Matt could tell them apart.

The first time they went out, about 10 minutes after they met, Foggy reached for Matt's arm to help him down the stairs outside their building. That was before Foggy learned to stay half a step ahead on Matt's left side so he could hold the cane in his right.

_"Being with the Blind, 101," Matt had said with an easy smile that didn't make Foggy feel stupid. "It works better if I take your arm." Matt positioned Foggy's arm the way he wanted it, patting it softly when it was right before putting his hand around Foggy's elbow. _

_ "How will you know I've offered it?" he'd asked._

_ "I guess I'll just have to trust you," Matt'd said._

Karen's easy to be with. To talk to, although she's as skillful at deflecting his questions as Matt has always been. But he agrees to tell her some of their stories because he's quite used to being the side-kick who's friends with the hot blind guy.

His first impression when Matt walked into their room all those years ago wasn't wrong. Matt was incredible lady-bait, attractive enough just sitting at the bar or in the library to turn the girls' heads, before they realized he was blind and inevitably treated him like a novelty. Not that Matt ever seemed to mind when they wanted to know what it's like to kiss a blind man more than they wanted to know him.

But Foggy doesn't get that vibe from Karen. She's different. And he doesn't feel like he's betraying Matt by telling her about him. That, and he knows he can make her laugh. Comic relief: it's what he has to offer. He's the funny one. It's the only weapon in his arsenal, well that and minor home-repairs, and he's not afraid to use it.

"And then Matt bangs his cane around and says, 'Am I in the right room?'"

She does laugh, as he knew she would. It's good she feels safe even though the building was torn up by shady men and is full of dark corners and lurking danger. He pretends he's made her feel secure enough to let go and enjoy herself.

"Where did you put his furniture?" Karen asks.

"Dorm room across the hall."

He listens to her laugh again instead of telling her he was worried, after he muscled all of Matt's things out of their room while he was in Spanish class. It was early on, after all. They hadn't known each other very long. But Matt said he appreciated that Foggy didn't walk on eggshells around him.

Matt was always so cheerful. Charming. All those different smiles people reacted to even though he couldn't see them do it. Quick to laugh, especially at himself. Matt was nice to everyone. Friendly. But Foggy knew, even back then, Matt didn't have friends. He never let anyone get too close to him or stick around too long. Foggy didn't know why he was different, but he knew he liked it. He liked being the guy Matt Murdock trusted. Foggy didn't want him to think he was making fun or being mean. And as he stood there, sweating and huffing just a little bit from the mad scramble to lug the sturdy institutional furniture across the hall, he worried he'd gone too far and would ruin everything.

_"It could have been worse," Matt had finally said, when Foggy asked if he was mad and he'd stopped laughing long enough to answer. He eased down onto the floor and looked up, so Foggy could see his long eyelashes and eyes that don't focus through the top of his glasses. "Next time, if you want to be truly diabolical, just shift everything over six inches. That would be a lot easier, not to mention hell on the shins."_

"Oh God," Karen laughs. "Oh, I really wish I knew you guys back then."

Even though she always says she's the same age, Foggy knows she's not. When he and Matt were in school together, she was just a kid. Back then, during their glory days, they could have been her babysitters, not that anyone would leave their kid in the care of a blind man.

Matt thinks something happened before she moved here. Something terrible before the incident with Union Allied she won't or can't talk about, at least not yet. As if waking up to a dead guy in your apartment isn't awful enough. If Matt's right, and Foggy knows better than to think he's not because Matt is always right, it aged her, whatever it was that happened. She's seen too much, been to hell and back, and it changed her. Which makes her a perfect fit for them.

"Much better off knowing us now," he says with a grin, keeping their conversation light and easy because there is enough darkness right now in their world. "We have our own practice. And I'm a hell of a lot more dashing than I was in my awkward college days."

"Oh yeah?" she taunts. "I'm going to need photographic proof of that, counselor."

"I have dug myself another hole, haven't I?" he asks.

"Well," she teases. "It's been about five minutes. You were due."

"Yeah, yeah. I see that."

"You know, there is something I just gotta know. It's killing me."

Here it comes, he thinks.

"No, I do not kiss on the first date," Foggy says before she can ask her Matt-centric question.

She laughs, which is exactly what Foggy intended.

Honestly, Foggy can't tell her whatever it is she wants to know because doesn't know how Matt doesn't get hit by taxis or cheated at the coffee shop or keeps from slicing off all his fingertips every time he cooks. He doesn't understand how Matt's fingers read faster than Foggy's eyes or how he always knows exactly how much booze to pour into a glass or how he separates his whites and colors when he does his laundry. Foggy has no idea what happened to his mother or if she left before or after the accident or why he always smiles when he tells stories about his dad when he obviously feels somehow responsible for his death or whatever possessed boy-Matt to throw himself bettwen a random stranger and danger.

Foggy's heard the "hope for the best" hair-combing line more times than he can count, because of course girls always want to know about things like that, and it's always worked to make Matt seem endearingly vulnerable without asking for pity and disarms whoever asked how he combs his hair. But even though he lived with Matt for years, Foggy has no clue how he actually pulls it off.

The question no one ever asks, but Foggy would if he only got one, is how does a blind guy always manage to see what's most important more than everyone else who's actually able too look?

"Sorry," he continues, waving his hands as if he has to defend his virtue from her advances. He wishes. "Not going to happen."

"No! No." She takes a deep breath, and blushing surely to the tips of her toes, she asks, "What's the deal with that meat grinder in the pencil skirt?"

Foggy knows he's made a face because she scrambles.

"No! No," she says again. She reaches out to touch his arm but stops just before making contact. "She just." Karen shrugs. "She doesn't seem like your type."

"Marci?" he asks, having difficulty believing her 'it's killing me' question was about him, not Matt. "Yeah. She was different. Back when I knew her."

He shrugs, still not able to understand why someone like Marci, someone hot and rich and spoiled and smart, a girl who expected to get her own way because she always had before, stooped to his level and stayed there for as long as she did. She was not one of the many Matt-admirers who hung around Foggy to get closer to him. She was never interested in Matt except to wonder why Foggy didn't mind living with the blind guy. Because she was blunt and not always politically correct, especially when she'd been drinking, and somehow that made Foggy like her even more. He learned to appreciate Marci's odd brand of clarity.

"Or maybe she wasn't. I don't know." Foggy shrugs again. "Matt's always getting involved with the wrong girl, so maybe he just rubbed off on me."

"Huh." He notices Karen sit up straighter and how she fails to look casual and uninterested. "So Matt dates a lot?"

"Date?" he scoffs. "I wouldn't exactly call it that. He hasn't really been with anyone for more than a month or two."

Their phone was always ringing for Matt, back when they shared the landline in their room, and girls slipped Foggy their numbers with the unspoken understanding he would dial, not that Matt needed help with things like that.

Matt couldn't see him do it, but Foggy was unabashed about studying his moves, the blind Casanova. Foggy watched the way the women acted around Matt. They confided in him more quickly than other men, trusted him. Didn't see Matt as a threat. Foggy watched as women begged for Matt's fingers to softy explore far more than a sighted man would be allowed to touch. He once saw a woman nearly brought to orgasm by Matt touching the palm of her hand. It was one of the craziest and most erotic things he'd ever seen. He felt like such a lech for watching.

He saw the different, but inevitably beautiful, women reflected in Matt's dark glasses and wondered if they thought it was weird to watch themselves move close enough to kiss him when he couldn't see them.

_"You know you could have any one of these hotties as your girlfriend, don't you?" Foggy had asked after more than a semester of bearing witness to the revolving door that was Matt's love-life. "How do you always know they're so damned good looking?"_

_ "It's a gift."_

_ "No. Seriously."_

_ They'd been drinking, Foggy more than Matt, as usual, but he'd learned that was when Matt was most likely to actually answer questions._

_ "How do I know they're good looking?" Matt had asked._

_ "Why don't you ever keep one of them around longer than a few weeks if they're very good and lucky?" _

_ "It's." Matt had swallowed and smiled. Not his easy, open smile that makes people want to tell him all their secrets or his private, half smile because he seemed legitimately amused by the world around him. That time, it was the tight smile that meant he was hurt and didn't want people to know. "Complicated," he finally finished._

_ "Why?"_

_ Matt tapped Foggy's ankle with the tip of his cane._

_ "That?" Foggy'd asked, seeing his blurry face reflected back at him in Matt's lenses. "That's stupid, man. You think you'd be a burden? You're a catch. And you get along just fine."_

_ Better than fine, actually. Matt was smart and strong and took care of himself. Foggy, wondering where he disappeared to and wanting to make sure he was safe, had followed him to the gym and seen him beating the shit out of a punching bag. Sure, it wasn't exactly a moving target, but he hit it hard enough to make it tilt and spin and shift. He was light on his feet and ferocious as kept his balance and kept hitting long after Foggy got tired just watching him. If someone tried to mug him on the street, Matt wouldn't be an easy victim. He wouldn't go down without a fight, if he went down at all. _

_Plus, Matt knew things. Felt things more clearly than other people. Seemed to understand in a way most people didn't. It seemed like a cliche to say the blind guy was a good listener, but he really did hear differently, closely and better, than people who distracted by the glittery world around them. _

_ "It's asking a lot of someone," Matt had replied. "To be with me."_

_ "I'm with you," Foggy had quietly stated._

_ "Well," Matt had smiled. "You're special. And obviously a glutton for punishment."_

"Hmm," Karen replies. "That's kind of sad."

"On the plus side, he gets to touch a lot of pretty girls." Foggy watches Karen's eyes widen in shock. "On their faces," he quickly adds, not wanting her to think Matt is some kind of perv. "Um, that's, you know, how he tells what people look like? Or at least that's what he tells the ladies. Although he always seems to know which ones are hot before he puts his grubby little mitts on them," Foggy says so Karen will smile. Anything to break the sudden tension choking the air between them.

"Does he know what you look like?" she asks.

"He's got a rough idea," Foggy hedges. "I only ever let him put her hands on my face once. 'Cause. You know, weird."

_"You know you don't have to turn your back when you take off your clothes," Matt had said. He was laying on his bed with a book. "Modesty's a virtue and all, but I can't see you anyway."_

_ "How do I know you haven't been faking this whole blind-thing just to see me naked?" Foggy teased._

_ "Foggy."_

_ "Yeah. Bad joke. You are definitely a ladies' man. Just." Foggy sighed. "Habit, I guess." Foggy was grateful, not for the first time, Matt couldn't see him blush. He had no desire to relive the humiliating horrors of high school locker rooms ever ever again. "Besides, how do you know?"_

_ "Your voice," he'd quietly said, his fingers still on the page. "It changes direction."_

_ "You're a freak show, man. Kind of creepy sometimes, to tell you the truth."_

_ Matt had only shrugged. _

_ "Do you ever wonder?" Foggy had asked. "What I look like?"_

_ "I have a picture of you in my head."_

_ "You don't. I mean you haven't." Foggy cleared his throat because this was weird. "You always do the face thing with girls. Ask if you can touch their faces? Crazy awesome pick-up line, I might add. They melt for it. You've just never asked me."_

_ "I didn't think you wanted me to."_

_ "I didn't."_

_ "But you do now?"_

_ "Maybe." _

_ No one had ever touched him as much as Matt did. It was easy to get into the habit of it, putting his arm out for Matt when they were walking. He was used to the soft pressure of Matt's fingers on the inside of his elbow. It had become such an ingrained habit that Foggy sometimes didn't even feel it anymore because Matt didn't grip onto him like Foggy originally thought he would. Then again, Matt didn't need to._

_ Foggy watched as Matt put aside his book and walked over to Foggy's bed. He didn't use his cane inside the room, long ago having memorized exactly where everything was. After a couple of early incidents that left Matt bruised and Foggy apologizing, Foggy learned to push in his desk chair, to not leave books or wet towels on the floor, to make sure things stayed in their place or to give Matt notice if they didn't. _

_Matt sat down next to Foggy. He wished now he hadn't told Matt he didn't need to wear his glasses in their room after Matt once confided he wore them more for other people than himself. Because those eyes not-looking at him felt too intimate suddenly. Too close. _

_ "May I?" he'd quietly asked._

_ Foggy nodded once. Matt didn't move, just sat there, waiting. _

_ "I nodded," he'd said. "Which was stupid of me, really. To nod. When you're about to touch my face because you can't see."_

_ "You're not stupid," Matt had said. "But close your eyes. No sense in both of us being blinded."_

_ Foggy smiled and was relieved to follow Matt's instructions. He knew he would've watched, and it was better not to. Part of him needed to shut out the deceptively innocent gaze he knew wasn't seeing him but somehow always saw him more clearly than anyone else ever had. _

_ Matt put one hand on Foggy's cheek, the touch softer than a whisper that sent shivers through his arms. His fingertips brushed against the tips of Foggy's eyelashes, traced the line of his nose down to his lips. As if Matt knew Foggy was about to stand up, to get away from this strangely invasive examination, Matt brought his other hand up to his cheek to hold his head in place. His touch was still gentle enough it would be easy to break free, but Foggy suddenly didn't want to. This was Matt, after all. His best friend. His only friend, really. He wanted him to have an accurate picture. _

_ Foggy sat very still and tried not to breathe through his mouth because he hadn't brushed his teeth since that morning. Matt's hands grazed the stubble he hadn't shaved in a couple of days down his neck, finally coming to rest where Foggy's neck met his chest. Matt's thumb pressed softly against the pulse point in Foggy's throat._

_ "You don't need to be embarrassed," Matt had said as he stood up and went back to his side of the room. _

_ "How do you know?" Foggy began._

_ "Your cheeks are flushed." Matt drew the book back into his lap and turned his gaze to the pages he couldn't see, surely as a kindness to Foggy. "Thank you." He politely bowed his head, as if Foggy had given him a gift. "You have a good face. It's nice to finally see you."_

"Are you going to finish that?" he asks Karen, nodding towards her plate. Not that he's actually hungry, but it's something to do with his hands. And he likes the idea of eating off of the plate she's been using.

"No," Karen shakes her head, distracted, as if she somehow was imaging Matt touching Foggy like that. "No, please." She hands him her plate. "You ever." She quietly clears her throat, and Foggy thinks she'd be toeing the ground if they were standing. "Tell him what I look like?"

"No," Foggy replies around his mouthful of food. "He doesn't need me to tell him..."

He lets his voice trail off before he can finish and tell Karen Matt knows she's beautiful without Foggy telling him. Matt knows how fine and fair her skin is by the way her lotion smells or something crazy like that. He learns more about a woman when he shakes her hand than Foggy would know after a date and spending the night in her bed.

"He's probably got a picture of you in his head," he tells her. Knowing Matt as he does, Foggy's quite sure it's detailed and accurate, right down to how her eyes are so blue they remind him of a summer sky. "I don't like to mess with those."

"Sure," Karen nods. "Hey Foggy." She looks away as she takes a breath, but when she looks back, he can see that she's resolved. "I want you to touch my face."

No. She didn't. She wanted Matt to touch her face.

"But I can see you," Foggy says. "So."

"No. Of course," Karen stumbles. "I know. I just. I, um. I want to know how someone who's blind would see me."

She wants to pretend she's eating dinner with Matt. She wants to pretend they're Matt's fingers on her face. She wants to know if Matt would think she's pretty.

Foggy has always enjoyed being the blind guy's funny, sighted side-kick. Reveled in his role, really. Taken advantage of all the ways he benefits. But not this time. Not with Karen. He doesn't want to be the also-ran. Not with her. But he wants to touch her so badly his fingers twitch. He wants permission, just this once, to do what Matt gets to do all the time: feel her eyelashes and the tips of her ears and trace his thumb over her bottom lip.

"Look," she says. "You do me. Then I'll do you." She brushes her hair behind her ears, but it immediately slips back down, framing her face. She looks so young and so pretty and so very very sweet.

"Yeah," he quietly says. "Okay."

But he can't actually do it. Can't close the small gulf between them and touch her the way she's asked, the way he wants to. So she takes both his hands in hers and leads the way.

"You have to close your eyes," she says with a nervous smile.

"Oh! Right!" Foggy squeezes his eyes shut so he isn't tempted to cheat and peek. He will let his fingers do the seeing this time. Maybe, like Matt's, they will be able to see more than his above-average eyes can.

His hands tremble, just a bit, until he cradles her face in them. She sighs, relaxing into his touch. Her skin feels even finer than it looks. Soft and so so smooth. Her cheeks are warm even though it's chilly in the apartment, and he can feel her heartbeat fluttering in her neck. He wants to lean in and kiss her, feel her lips against his, and just maybe he will, but for now, he's content to run his finger against her bottom lip. It's still there when her tongue sneaks out to moisten it, only she gets more of him than her.

"Just tell me what you feel," she asks him.

He wants to tell her it's nice to finally see her, but he feels too stupid using Matt's line as well as his signature move.

"I feel," he begins, wondering if she can hear the galloping beat of his heart as he tries to find words to describe the picture he's feeling.

Only then the world explodes.


	2. Darkest Before the Dawn

**Darkest Before the Dawn**

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_A/N: Missing Scene at Matt's apartment from "Inside the Ring" (episode 1.1). Because I had an awful lot of "how did that work?" questions at the end._

* * *

"You shouldn't be here," the man in the mask says. She's nauseous and a little bit dizzy and it's hard for her to hear him over the sound of the rain and the relentless pounding of her heart that's echoing loudly in her ears.

"I," she begins, trying to swallow. In the end, she just nods in agreement. He's right. She shouldn't be here. "I'm staying with a." She doesn't know what to call Matt Murdock. Her lawyer, sure, but that sounds weird, that she's staying with her defense attorney. Her blind, ridiculously good looking defense attorney who said he would keep her safe and she was desperate enough to believe him.

She wants to to think maybe he's her friend, or could be, if he doesn't get murdered for helping her like poor Daniel did, or get tired of her nearly being killed. He seems like a really smart guy. Smart enough to know she's not worth being friends with.

"I'm staying somewhere else," she finally says. "It's not far."

"Lock up and go there. Stay in the lights on the way. I'll take care of this."

She walks towards her apartment before thinking to ask what the masked man was doing here, how he knew someone would be waiting for her, and wondering what he's planning to do with the guy chained to the scaffolding and the flash drive that caused all this trouble. Only when she turns back, he's already only a distant shadow, dragging away the man who tried to kill her.

By the time she secures trash bags and duct tape over the broken window, at least well enough to keep out of the rain for tonight, her hands are shaking so badly she can barely get the key into the door to lock it behind her. She wants to think it's shivers because of the wet clothes, but she knows that's not it. She recognizes the bitter taste of adrenaline in her mouth and the panic flooding to the tips of her fingers.

Get back to Matt, she tells herself. Get back to Matt. She repeats the words inside her head as she forces herself to keep moving, one foot in front of another, because if she stops, when she eventually will have to stop, she is going to freak the fuck out, and she can't afford to do that right now.

She half-runs back to Matt's apartment, luckily just a couple of well-lit blocks away, and crashes into him, almost knocking him down on the front stoop.

"Matt?" He's standing in the rain in his bare feet and sopping wet pajama pants and a t-shirt, rain dripping into his eyes.

He's waiting for her.

"You're safe," he breathes as he steadies her before she falls over and takes him down with her. She can't tell if he's saying that to comfort her or himself. But her brain latches onto the words. She needs to believe them.

"I took your hoodie," she stupidly replies.

"I'll get over it," he says. "Let's go inside."

He ushers her up the stairs, and it's not until they're standing once again in his darkened entry way that she notices his cane leaning against the wall next to the door. He hadn't taken it with him outside.

"How did you know where I was?" she asks.

"I woke up and you weren't here."

He does this, she realizes, answers questions but not really. He makes it sound easy and conversational, but it must take practice to choose your words so carefully all the time. Maybe they teach it in law school. Matt must've been top of that class. Foggy, not so much.

"What were you going to do in your bare feet?"

"I would've improvised. I told you I'd keep you safe, Karen."

He smiles that incredible smile, all dimples and laugh lines around his eyes. He's not quite facing her, and she thinks maybe it's a good thing he's blind because if his eyes lit up the way other people's do with that smile, she suspects it would be more than she could handle. She would have to crawl into his floor and die, and she really doesn't want to do that. In fact, after the past few days, she thinks it's safe to assume she has a very strong survival instinct.

He takes her elbow and gently leads her into the living room. The glaring sign floods the room in subtly shifting colored light, and she's grateful it's bright enough to not leave any dark corners in the apartment. Still holding onto her, he smooths the quilt over the couch where he'd been sleeping with his other hand.

"You're hurt," he quietly says as he guides her to sit down. She appreciates it's not a question she has to answer. Because yes, she is hurt. And not just where her head hit the wall. "Let me see," he says without a trace of irony as his hands move her hair out of the way.

"How did you?" she begins to ask when his fingers immediately find the tender knot on the back of her head.

But he tilts his head to one side, like he listening to something very quiet far away, as his fingers weave through her hair. He probes all over her head, his fingers spidering down and across to ensure he doesn't miss a single spot. She holds her breath, waiting for him to move to her face, like the blind people always do in the movies, but he doesn't stray past her hairline.

Karen knows he can't see, yet somehow he makes her feel like no one else has ever cared enough to look at her this closely before. It should scare her, the way he's studying her so intimately, but instead she just feels his promise. She feels safe.

She's curious about how he knew about her head, but she doesn't want to disturb the intense look of concentration on his face. She sits quietly and focuses on his eyes instead of her questions or what just happened. Without the dark lenses in place, he looks innocent and strangely vulnerable, but she can tell he's neither of those things. His eyes are a pretty shade of pale green, framed by long lashes, and they gaze off somewhere just over her shoulder and slightly above her head.

"It's not a concussion," he finally pronounces as he stands up, like he knows she was staring at him and saw his eyes instead of herself reflected back in the smoked lenses and doesn't like it. "You're going to have a hell of a bump though."

"You went to medical school too?" she asks as he heads to the kitchen and opens the freezer.

Matt seems capable of accomplishing just about anything even though he's blind. She feels badly for before, when she pitied him. She had no right to feel sorry for him when he told her he missed the sky. Sure he did, because being blind has to suck. No way to tiptoe around that. But he doesn't want pity, and he certainly doesn't need it. Not from her or anyone else.

"My dad was a boxer," he replies. He's wearing the glasses again when he sits down next to her on the couch and holds an ice pack to the back of her head. "It was just the two of us, so I got a lot of hands-on first-aide training. Used to sew a mean stitch, back in the day. Not so much anymore."

"Good thing I'm not bleeding," she says. Because blind guys don't sew. Except he'd said the accident happened when he was nine, and a little kid shouldn't know how to put in stitches either. Maybe that's why he seems so much older than Foggy. It helps to explain the calm, confident way he carries himself. The way he says things like he'll keep her safe so that she doesn't think to wonder how a blind guy will make that happen until much later.

"Karen, can you tell me what happened?"

"I," she begins.

She doesn't know what to say. He's her only friend, if that's even what he is. He's really kind and has been so nice to her, and she could have gotten him hurt. Or worse. The last lawyer she talked to is dead. And if not for that man in the mask, she would be dead too. He would have slit her throat, right there in the her apartment. Her blood would have soaked into the carpet next to Daniel's. It would have been days before someone found her because no one would notice that she was missing.

"I," she tries again because Matt and Foggy would care. She knows that. They care, and maybe that's enough for whoever it was to send someone after them next, after she's dead in her apartment. She's already lied enough, and Matt's been so nice to her, and he deserves better than this. She owes him this truth.

But before she can find the words, she's crying. Like a dam that had been holding up under the rising pressure until suddenly, it just can't anymore. What had been hairline cracks in her self-control break apart, spewing ugly sobs that shake the sofa.

Two nights ago, she was drugged and framed for murder. She woke up next to a nice guy, only now he's dead, and his blood was under her fingernails and soaked into her carpet. Then a cop tried to strangle her in her prison cell. And tonight a hit man was waiting for her in the dark.

This has to be a nightmare. This can't be her life. She needs to wake up.

Karen, wake up. Wake the fuck up right now.

"Karen," Matt says as he pulls her into his arms. She hangs onto him because he's the only life preserver in the middle of this flood of 'Oh Shit! We're all going to die!' and buries her face in his neck.

She is not dreaming. Her imagination would not have been able to invent a beautiful, blind savior who doesn't seem at all upset that a random stranger he had to bail out of jail is sobbing on his sofa. She's not that creative.

He rubs soothing circles on her back and doesn't seem put out at the inconvenience of a wet, hysterical girl snotting onto his shoulder. He doesn't tell her to calm down or stop crying. He doesn't tell her this isn't the end of the world because, who knows, maybe it is. Matt just sits there, like he knows exactly how long she's been swallowing the terror and the panic and guilt, long before two nights ago, and he has nothing he'd rather do than patiently wait for her to cry until there are no more tears left.

"A man was waiting for me in my apartment," she finally says when she can talk. Matt doesn't seem to have a clock, so she has no idea how much time has passed.

She leaves her head on his shoulder, not ready to abandon his warmth or the lean line of muscles she feels pressed against his side. His hand presses comfortingly on her back, like he understands she suddenly feels too light without all that noisy grief. She gets the sense he knows she feels like she's insubstantial enough to float away without him holding onto her.

"Second attempt on your life in two days," he says.

She appreciates that, like before, he doesn't ask her to answer questions, like what was she doing there when the whole point of her staying here with him was because he and Foggy suspected there would be someone lying in wait at her apartment.

"It's enough to give a girl a complex," she admits in a shakier voice than she'd like.

She feels it when he smiles, and she moves her hand around his neck, to feel his pulse beneath her fingers. She's just had a nervous break-down in front of someone she doesn't even know but wants to be friends with, but he's as steady as a metronome.

"Second man you've fought off in two days," he quietly points out. "You're brave. You're a fighter, Karen. Not a victim. Don't let them make you forget that part of the story."

"Is this trauma recovery?" she asks. "Me being grateful for what I have and all even though people keep trying to kill me?"

"Maybe," he admits with a smile. "Doesn't mean what's happened isn't terrible, but they haven't succeeded. Which is definitely better than the alternative." His voice is as calming as his hand on her back, and she thinks she could curl up on this couch and never leave. "I might go so far as to call it a miracle."

"It wasn't a miracle," she says. "It was a man in a black mask. He just. I don't know. He came out of no where and saved me." She shakes her head. "I didn't even say thank you."

"A man in a black mask?"

"Yeah," she nods. "I know it sounds crazy, but it's true."

"I believe you."

"You always believe me when I tell you the wildest, most unbelievable sounding stories. Are you like this with everyone? Should I worry about people taking advantage of your good nature?"

"I'm not that easy of a mark, Karen. Besides, Foggy worries enough about me. He's quite the mother hen."

"He seems really nice."

"Foggy's the best. But I can take care of myself."

"I believe you," she whispers.

"Can you tell me about the man in the mask?"

"He wasn't very big. Your size, maybe. But he was."

She wants to describe how fierce he was. How fast and scary, which was also the opposite of scary because she knew he was going to stand between her and danger and not let anything get to her. But Jesus. Conspiracies and drugged drinks and dirty cops and hit men and now a man in a mask. It's nuts.

"He moved like one of the guys in those stupid kung-foo movies high school boys always watch," she says instead.

"I haven't seen a lot of those," he admits with a smile.

She realizes he doesn't have a tv in his apartment. At least not one she can see. Or pictures hanging on his walls. Or any pictures at all. Or knick-knacks. She wonders if that's a blind thing, having a living space so stark to avoid having to dust and knock stuff over, or if it's a Matt thing.

"You're not missing much. But this man, he fought like that. Running up the walls and flipping and kicking and breaking through the window and still fighting. It was." Her voice trails off while she swallows and sniffles and tries to sound less like a girl who will always need rescuing. She sighs. "You're right. He was totally a miracle. My own personal miracle. He said he would make sure everyone knew about Union Allied, that they would leave me alone if I couldn't hurt them anymore. I don't know what he meant, but I trust him." She sighs. "Matt, what are we going to do?"

"Well," he says with a smile. "You'll sleep in my sweatpants tonight since the clothes Foggy got for you are soaked. It's probably not going to be your best look ever, but they'll do." A small laugh that sounds only a tiny bit hysterical escapes and she nods her head. "There are certain benefits to only having one case that's just been settled, and tomorrow morning, we will take full advantage of them all. We'll sleep in. Then we'll call Foggy to get one of his cousins over to your apartment to fix the window while we go out to breakfast. Sure, you'll still be wearing my sweatpants, but this is Hell's Kitchen, so you won't be under-dressed. By the time we're done, you should be able to go back home."

"Foggy has lots of cousins?"

"Brace yourself when you meet the Nelson clan," he advises. "There are about 5,000 of them, and they're all very loud and will touch you and force you to eat way more than you want to. It's best to not fight the inevitable, though. They are very determined women. It's like trying to resist the tide. Just let them wash over you."

She smiles, pleased that he seems to think she will meet Foggy's family when she's just a client who can't pay them.

"Foggy knows everyone," he says. "Someone will get over there right away."

"You make it sound so simple."

"It is simple," he says. "It's just not easy. The simplest things are always the hardest. You're shivering."

"So are you."

"We're wet. Why don't you take a hot shower. You'll feel better. And then maybe you can get some sleep. You're exhausted."

The thought of going anywhere alone, even just into the next room and shutting the door, immediately replaces all Matt's borrowed calm with terrified panic.

"I'll be right here." Matt is quick to reassure her, as if once again he's able to read her mind. "You don't have to be afraid. You can leave the door open, if you'd feel better. I promise not to peek."

She laughs and nods her head. "Yeah. Okay."

She uses the same toothbrush he'd given her earlier to brush her teeth before her shower. Standing at the bathroom sink, she watches Matt fold the damp quilt they'd been sitting on and gather up a pile of wet clothes that he hangs over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. He has his glasses on, and when she's really paying attention, she sees the way he touches things more than sighted people, as if he needs to make sure stuff is where he thinks it is. Or maybe to make sure he's where he thinks he is. But if not for that, she wouldn't be able to tell, watching him move with easy grace around the room, that he's blind.

"Here," he says, handing her a glass of water.

She nods before she remembers he can't see her. "Thanks. I'm okay."

"That I don't believe," he says. "Not yet. But you will be." Before she can think of a way to answer that one, he points at the medicine cabinet. "Advil's in there."

"Thanks."

She realizes he wasn't kidding about knowing first-aide when she opens the cupboard over the sink. The shelves are well stocked with different kinds of bandages and gauze, butterflies, tape, disinfectant, and bottles of that liquid adhesive they use sometimes instead of stitches. She runs her fingers over all the packages, wondering how he knows which one he wants.

Karen turns on the water to let it warm up and glances in the trash can to see what kind of toothbrush he opened for her so she can replace it. Because how would he know which kind of toothbrush to buy at the store? Only the trash can has been emptied since she went to bed that first time just a couple hours ago. That's strange. She doesn't remember him doing that. She'll just have to guess because if she asks, she knows he'll tell her not to worry about it. And she's not worried. She just doesn't want to owe him anymore than she already does.

She unbuttons the wet shirt and glances out to see if Matt is sitting there. It was weird, earlier, when she pulled off the Bolts t-shirt Foggy gave her right in front of him, and he stood there, frozen, the way a man would when he saw a woman without a shirt for the first time when he wasn't sure if he was supposed to see her or not. But maybe he was just standing still so he didn't run into her before she got it buttoned. She's never spent time around someone who's blind. If they are friends, or are going to be friends, there will be a lot for her learn in the next few weeks. Surely Foggy will have helpful hints.

Matt isn't in the living room, so she tiptoes around the corner until she can see into his bedroom. He's already changed into dry pajama pants and is toweling his hair. Karen can smell the distinctive scent of glue and sees bruises on his chest.

"Did you cut yourself?" she asks.

"Do you need something?" Matt asks instead of answering.

He pulls a t-shirt over his head. Which is kind of too bad, Karen thinks, because he looks all right without a shirt. More than all right. Which is a stupid thing to notice on a night when she's nearly been killed. Again. But there it is. He really is beautiful.

"No. I. Um."

"I'll come sit with you," he offers.

"No. I'm okay. Really. I just." She shrugs, hating that she really would feel better knowing he was sitting in the bathroom while she took a shower. Because as much as she hates to admit she's a scardy-cat and a baby, she hates even more the thought that she'll have to close her eyes to wash her hair. And she won't be able to hear over the sound of the water.

"I don't mind." Once more, Matt takes her elbow and starts walking towards the steamy bathroom, leaving her no choice except to follow his lead. "I have to brush my teeth anyway. So really, you're doing me a favor."

"Yeah," she ruefully says. "I'm doing you all kinds of favors tonight."

But Matt only shrugs and grins and reaches for his toothbrush. He grabs hers by mistake, they're identical except for the green band of color on the new one he gave her and the pink band on his. Before she can tell him, he must realize it and gets the right one. She can't help but stand there and watch as he adds the toothpaste in a move that doesn't seem at all strange or awkward, something she thinks should be harder than he makes it look.

She quickly strips off the rest of her wet clothes and steps into the shower. She occasionally looks around the curtain to make sure he's still there while she washing, catching glimpses of him flossing his teeth and combing his wet hair. When she finally turns off the water and pulls back the curtain, he's standing there with an open towel.

"Such service," she says.

"We aim to please, Miss Page," he teases back. He drapes the towel around her and steps back, careful not to touch her as she dries off.

She follows him back to his room and while she's putting on a pair of his sweats and a t-shirt, he efficiently pulls the fitted sheet tight on the bed and straightens the covers so everything is cool and smooth when she slides in.

She turns on her side and watches him settle into the couch without covers this time since they got the quilt all wet earlier. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. She wonders if he can tell the difference, or if it's all just dark. Does his darkness feel infinite, like he could fall off into nothingness, never to be seen or heard from again? Or is it claustrophobic darkness that crushes against him even though he can't even escape it.

God, she doesn't know which one is worse.

"Matt?" she breathes so quietly it's doesn't even count as a whisper.

His eyes immediately flash open. For a second, he seems to be staring right at her. She knows he isn't, but he somehow does see exactly what she needs because he gives her a kind little half smile and nods before getting up and climbing to bed with her.

"I know it's a lot to take on faith, given what you know about me," she begins once he's laying quietly next to her. "But I'm really not one of those women."

"What women?" he asks.

"The helpless, damsel-types who sit around and wait for someone to rescue them. I'm not needy. Not usually, anyway. Up until two days ago, I could take care of myself too."

"I believe you," he says with a smile.

"You do?"

"Yeah. Want me to leave the lights on? It won't bother me."

"It's okay."

Part of her wishes he would turn to her, and not just because he's the most attractive man she's ever seen up close and personal, let alone gone to bed with. But mostly she's relieved she doesn't have to worry about any of that. Not tonight. She knows her virtue is safe with him, even if he is laying right next to her on sexy, slippery silk sheets.

"Matt?" she finally whispers. "It probably sounds silly, and of course you don't have to tell me, but are you ever afraid of the dark?"

He softly sighs and shifts before answering. "They always say it's the darkest before the dawn. I don't know if it's literally true, but I like to think it is. I find the idea..." He shifts again as he searches for the word he wants. "Comforting. When I was a kid, I'd watch my dad's fights on tv. Or, after, listened to them. And then, when it was over, I'd sit at the kitchen table with the first-aide kit and wait for him to come home."

"That sounds terrifying."

"It was, even though I knew the worst was already over. The fight was finished. He was coming home. But that hour always took forever, the waiting. Until I could see him with my own eyes, or feel him with my own fingers, and know he was really okay. That hour in the kitchen, waiting, was always the darkest."

"Matt? How is that comforting? Now everything's always dark for you."

"True," he admits in a voice that makes her know he isn't offended. "But it's also always about to get better."

Matt had something terrible happen to him. Something no one could have anticipated and something he surely didn't deserve. But it happened anyway. Because accidents happen, and life isn't fair, and that's just the way it is. It was kind of a miracle he wasn't killed, that he survived. Sure, he's not the same as he was before. It changed him. But he didn't let it stop him. He didn't spend his life terrified of what could be lurking in the dark corners.

Jesus, for Matt, the entire world is a dark corner, and he still smiles. All the time. That amazing, dimply, infectious smile that lights up entire rooms he can't even see. She'd be doing all right if she was half as brave as he is.

"Goodnight, Matt."

"Sleep well, Karen."


	3. I See Said the Blind Man

**I See Said the Blind Man**

* * *

_A/N: Missing scene from Matt's apartment between episodes 1.9 and 1.10._

* * *

"Holy shit, Matt," Hotty McBurner Phone says as she she hurries across the living room.

Foggy doesn't get up from his spot next to Matt on the floor because he's too busy pressing the towel into the gaping mess of blood where his side should be. So maybe it's just as well the woman used a key to let herself into Matt's apartment.

Foggy doesn't have key to Matt's apartment, but she does. The woman Matt assured him hadn't worked out, like his beautiful women never work out. He'd actually felt sorry for him.

And the hits just keep coming. Awesome.

"Matt?" She pulls on latex gloves as she kneels on the floor. "Matt, can you tell me what happened?"

Hotty McBurner Phone is, not surprisingly, indeed very hot. Of course she is. And apparently she's Dr. Hotty McBurner Phone. This gets more awesome by the second.

Foggy lets her take over towel duty and watches her peer at the hole underneath.

"He's been out of it since I called you, and he hasn't said much. You want to tell me what the hell is going on?"

"Grab that light and bring it over here," she says, nodding towards the bendable halogen. "I need to see."

She's as good as Matt is at not answering the fucking question. Although it does explain the lamp. Foggy has been wondering about that lamp. Actually, this explains all sorts of things. Foggy suddenly thinks he's the one who's been blind to not see it before. But how was he supposed to know his best friend, his blind best friend, is the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.

Jesus, is Matt even blind?

"Oh, fuck," she curses as the bright light illuminates Matt's blood smeared torso with frightening clarity. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. So help me," she says to Matt. "If you die on me, you stupid, stubborn, son-of-a-bitch, I will bring you back just so I can kill you myself." She takes a deep breath, and when she speaks again, it's back in the 'you're going to do exactly what I say' tone. "Help me get his clothes off. We need to keep pressure on this wound or he'll bleed out."

"What the hell?" Foggy begins to ask again.

"Help me, goddammit," she orders, and Foggy decides his questions will have to wait. He doesn't think she's going to answer any of them anyway.

After Matt's shirt is cut away and thrown to the side, he can't help but gasp in horror. It's much worse than he'd thought. Much, much worse. He thinks maybe he'd be okay with being blind for the rest of his life in exchange for un-seeing Matt's shiny, striated muscles that should be covered up with skin.

It's a good thing he didn't become a butcher after all because he think he may throw up.

"I think I'm going to be sick," he says.

"Don't you dare," she barks at him.

Dr. Hotty McBurner Phone leans even closer to Matt and pulls one of his hands to her face so he knows it's her. Foggy wants to un-see this too. The possessive way she touches him like she has some kind of right. Like maybe she's done it a thousand times before.

Then again, for all Foggy knows, she has.

"Matt, it's Claire. Matt, I need you to open your eyes for me."

"He's blind," Foggy says. At least, Foggy thinks he is.

"I know that," she snaps, as if Foggy is exceptionally stupid. "Matt, it's Claire. Wake up. I need you to wake up now."

He stirs for the first time since taking that swing that sent Foggy's phone sliding across the living room floor. As soon as he moves, Matt moans and gasps for breath.

"No no," she says. "Don't try to move. But I need your old ships ears for just a second, okay?"

What the hell are old ships ears?

"Matt, you have a major abdominal wound. I need you to listen and tell me if there's any internal bleeding. Are your organs okay?"

"Claire," he whisper-moans as his eyes flutter open.

"Matt, I know, and I'm really sorry, but if you can't do this, we're taking you to the hospital right now. Consequences be damned. I need to know if you're bleeding inside. And don't you fucking lie to me."

Foggy appreciates that she sounds equal parts concerned and pissed off. Maybe even leaning more towards the pissed. He can relate to that.

Matt weakly pats her cheek, just a tiny movement of his fingers, and closes his eyes again, but even Foggy can tell it's not because he passed out. He tilts his head to the side, that thing he does when he's really concentrating, and Dr. Hotty McBurner Phone, Claire, holds her breath while she waits for the hospital or not verdict from old ships ears.

Foggy still doesn't know what the hell old ships ears mean, but he hopes they say Matt goes the hospital because this is madness.

"Good," Matt finally says.

The word is barely out of his mouth before she springs into action, reaching for the bag of medical supplies. She looks inside before muttering "Fuck" again and dumping it unceremoniously onto the floor next to her.

"Broken bones I need to worry about?" she asks Matt.

"No. Just old ships."

Again with the old ships. Who the fuck is this woman and what's the deal with the old ships?

"What about your head? Matt, do you have a concussion? How's your skull?"

"Thick," he says and even offers her a weak smile, fucking bastard, before sighing and giving himself over to the pain.

"Okay," she says, although Foggy can't tell if she's talking to Matt or herself. "Get a pair of gloves," she tells Foggy. "You're going to help."

"Oh, no. Bad idea," he says. "I'm a lawyer."

"Well, tonight you're a trauma nurse. Gloves. Now." Foggy reluctantly pulls them on and kneels next to her on the floor. "Keep that in place," she says. When he replaces his hand on the blood-soaked towel, she presses them down harder, hard enough to make Matt moan.

"I don't want to hurt him," Foggy says.

"Nope. He does that just fine on his own. But we need to get the bleeding stopped. Right now hurt is better than dead. He's going to stay passed out, if he's lucky." While she talks, she is in constant motion. Foggy barely has time to breathe and she has an IV going in Matt's arm with a bag of saline. "He's lost a lot of blood. I'm going to have you hold this up, okay. We need to get fluid back into him."

She switches out the towel for a gauze pack and Foggy is quite fine holding a saline bag instead of being responsible for keeping Matt from bleeding to death. The towel makes a wet slap on the hard floor when she tosses it aside, and Foggy thinks he might throw up again.

"Deep breaths," she tells him. "In through your mouth. Count to five. Then slowly out through your nose."

Foggy does as he's told and starts to feel better until Dr. Hotty McBurner Phone, Claire, he reminds herself, her name is Claire, pulls out a sterile suture kit.

"Oh God," he murmurers when he sees the curved needle and thread.

"Just close your eyes if you have to," she calmly says as she begins to sew. "Remember to breathe. In and out, nice and steady. I will kick your ass if you pass out before we get him stabilized."

"Matt once told me he used to stitch up his dad when he was a kid," Foggy said, if only to have something to say, anything to cover up the terrible sound of Matt being stitched back together on his living room floor.

"Uh-huh," Claire agrees, more proof that Matt trusts her with his secrets.

More with the awesome.

"I had no idea stitches sounded so. So."

"Wet?" she offers.

"Yeah. Wet. So you're a doctor?"

"He asked the same thing," she says, but doesn't offer any more information. "I need a hand here. You can look. The worst is over." She presses Foggy's hand to the fresh gauze on Matt's side. She wipes the sweat from her forehead with her upper arm in a well-practiced move that keeps her bloodied gloves away from her face before using her elbow to pick through the medical supplies. "There," she says, replacing her hand on the gauze. "A syringe and that vial of antibiotics."

Matt's blood blooms onto the gauze pack, soaking through it in a red swell that looks like one of those abstract paintings.

"No, that's morphine. The other one."

"He doesn't like drugs," Foggy tells her as he hands them over.

"I know," she says again, this time in an irritated tone that tells Foggy this is a conversation she's had before and isn't eager to repeat. Matt must have explained how he feels exposed and disoriented when the world is spinning to her too. Yep, she knows all about Matt. "He'll get over it just this once or he can find himself a new seamstress. But I need to finish cleaning him up and make sure he's stable first."

She pulls back the gauze, and Foggy sees a neat line of black stitches holding Matt's side together. "Clot, damn you," she orders the wound before grabbing another new bandage and taping it securely into place.

Foggy watches as she fills the syringe with medicine and injects it into the IV line. The bag of saline has his bloody handprint on it. There's blood all over the floor. And Not-Dr. Claire's clothes. And Matt's clothes. And the towel and stacks of gauze she's tossed to the side. So much blood.

Matt's blood.

"Is he going to be okay?" Foggy whispers.

"You must be Foggy," she says instead of answering.

She moves over to the other side of his stomach and starts sewing up that long cut. It's not as deep, the blood already crusted over and dried along the angry red line. Foggy watches her hands and thinks they're a lot like Matt's, actually. Long and elegant. Skilled. Her fingers gently feel along his skin like she's reading information hidden in his flesh. She ties a final, neat little knot, pulling it tight with metal tweezer-like things, and moves to the gashes in Matt's chest. They didn't seem too serious before, when he was bleeding out of his side. But now the gashes look deep and long and deadly.

My God, what happened? How did he make it back home? How has this much blood ended up on the floor and he's not dead?

"Who the hell are you?" Foggy finally asks again as she sews the much smaller line above the gaping side wound.

"A friend," she says.

"Friends don't show up with an emergency room in a bag and perform minor surgery on the living room floor."

She ties a final knot and sits back on her knees, stretching her shoulders until they pop. She prepares another bandage and carefully eases the tape off Matt's side. Foggy thinks it still looks awful, but she nods her approval before securing the clean bandage into place.

"Get set that on the chair," she says, nodding towards the IV bag. "And take off his boots." Then those long fingers of hers make short work of Matt's belt and zipper while Foggy tugs off his boots.

She runs her fingers all along Matt's legs, Foggy supposes to check for injuries, but something about it seems like more than that, too. Again, her touch is intimate and possessive. It's as sensual as Matt's fingers moving across someone's face. Foggy can't make himself look away, but watching her makes Foggy's chest somehow both tight and empty. Someone else, someone he doesn't even know, a complete stranger to him but obviously not to Matt, touching his best friend so familiarly and knowledgeably makes him sick too. More with the awesome because he is fucking blind. He doesn't know Matt at all. Not in any way that matters.

"What the holy fuck is going on?" Foggy manages to say through a throat that's too tight.

"Help me turn him over. I think he has injuries on his back, too."

"No," Foggy snaps. "I'm not going to help you until you tell me something. Anything."

"I'm an ER nurse."

"Something I don't know," Foggy clarifies.

"My name is Claire," she tentatively offers.

"Yeah, not exactly what I was going for."

"I know."

Claire, and even her name is beautiful, Foggy thinks, leans back on her knees again and sighs. She pulls off her gloves the way he's seen doctors do it in the movies, so they're in a neat ball, all the blood and germs and contaminants trapped inside the latex.

"You know who I am," Foggy points out. "You seem to know all about him and this." He points angrily to the black mask on the floor. "When do I get to be up to speed?"

"I'm not going to presume to speak for him," Claire says, and as irritated as Foggy is, he begrudgingly respects her for protecting Matt. Matt never asked him too, but Foggy's been evading questions about his best friend since he met him too.

"Okay," Foggy sighs in defeat. "How do you want to do this?"

"As gently and infrequently as possible," Claire says. "I don't want to put any stress on his abdomen. Let's get him turned over here on the floor, and then we'll move him to the couch. He'll be more comfortable, and I can see to the smaller stuff from up there." She pulls on a fresh pair of gloves. "On the count of three."

Matt moans when they shift him, and Claire is quick to soothe his cheek with one hand while she probes the slices on his back with the other. Matt starts to jerk around, like he's trying to get up and fight them off even more he's more than half dead.

"Get in his face," Claire orders Foggy. "Talk to him. Let him feel you. Let him smell you. He needs to calm down."

"Matty, what the fuck?" Foggy whispers. He takes Matt's hand and puts it on his face, the way Claire had done earlier. It's too cold, Foggy thinks. Must be because of all the blood on the floor. His fingers feel like ice. He gently strokes Matt's hair and watches as Matt's face relaxes.

"Foggy?" he breathes because it's so quiet it's not even a whimper.

"Yeah. I'm here. And just so you know, I'm really pissed off at you. Because we're supposed to be a team, asshole. I'm supposed to be your fucking Goose. What the hell is all this?"

He glances over to see Claire taping another bandage over yet another line of stitches.

"Dude, you're a mess. This is the only time I've ever looked better than you. And fuck you because I can't even enjoy it. Seeing your insides is not my idea of a good time. It's actually making me more than a little sick."

"Can you hand me the glue and surgical tape?" Claire asks Foggy. "This one is shallow enough to get away with it."

Foggy keeps Matt's hand against his cheek as he moves through the dwindling pile of supplies to find what Claire needs. The sharp smell of adhesive reminds him of building models when he was a kid, and Claire's strong fingers hold together the long cut while the glue dries.

"He really cares about you," she quietly says.

"An hour ago, I would have agreed with you, but no offense," Foggy says. "Claire." He spits out her name like a curse. "But since I am completely in the dark here, no blind pun intended, I think I can say with certainty that he doesn't."

Claire finishes taping together the shallower gash and once again takes off her gloves. She takes Foggy's other hand and brings it to rest on Matt's back. Foggy rolls his eyes and tries to pull away, but Claire keeps him in place.

"Feel that?" she asks. Foggy sighs and feels the soft push and pull of air moving through Matt's lungs. "He was in full panic mode a couple minutes ago. Probably would have pulled out half these stitches while he fought us off until he passed out again. Would have done serious damage. And then he heard your voice and felt you next to him. Yeah, he loves you. Bodies don't lie."

"Whatever," Foggy mutters, yanking his hand back.

Claire shrugs, like she doesn't care enough to argue the matter further. "Believe what you want. Let's move him to the couch. Take his head. Try not to jostle him too much."

Foggy and Claire muscle Matt to the couch, Claire managing to keep Matt's torso level the entire time. He hates to admit that he's impressed. Damned impressed, actually. She is impressive, and really nice, and crazy beautiful like all of Matt's women always are, and it is so fucking unfair he wants to drop Matt's fucking head. But Foggy's grateful too, so grateful Claire's here because he wouldn't know what to do to keep Matt from bleeding out onto the floor. He wonders how Matt found her. Maybe he just stood around the ER and waited until someone hot offered to help him. Because things like that would happen to Matt.

And then Foggy has to stroke his hair sand babble at him some more about how mad he is because surely, if Matt can be a masked hero ninja-type, he can play a halfway decent game of intramural softball, because the movement from the floor to the couch is enough to make Matt come to and freak out again. And it pisses him off to see what Claire meant, the way Matt relaxes into Foggy's voice and Foggy's touch. Like he trusts him. But Foggy knows bodies do lie because Matt's has lied. Over and over. For years. Fucking years. Now that it looks like Matt isn't going to die right in front of him, the scales are tipping away from concerned and more towards angry.

He doesn't know jack shit about his best friend.

"Grab him some sweats or pajama pants or something," Claire says when Matt's breathing calmly. She has the adhesive out again and is gluing together cuts on his arms. "And a blanket. The heaviest one you can find. I don't want his core temperature to drop anymore than it already has."

"Does anyone ever argue with you when you use that tone?" Foggy asks as he heads to Matt's bedroom.

"He listens for shit," she admits.

"Preaching to the choir."

When he comes back with what she asked for, Claire is working on Matt's face. She moves her fingertips slowly around his jaw and across the bridge of his nose and around swelling eye.

"Dammit," she mumbles. "I think his orbital rim is fractured. But I can't tell for sure. Stupid, stubborn asshole."

"Don't want to ruin his handsome face?" Foggy asks. "Because it's not like he has to worry about losing any eye or anything."

She turns and glares at him. "Get an ice pack."

Foggy stands there and glares back.

"Please," she adds.

Foggy tries to win the staring contest, but he quickly gives up and heads to the kitchen. When he comes back with it, she's gluing together a cut along his hairline and carefully adding a line of tape. When that's done, she eases him into the sweatpants, not asking for Foggy's help, and takes a stethoscope to Matt's chest.

He's way too pale, even more so than usual, the drying blood a vicious contrast against his skin.

"Okay, then," she finally whispers, putting her hand on Matt's face like she's the one who needs to feel him to know what he looks like. "Okay."

"Here," Foggy says, interrupting her moment by thrusting the ice pack at her.

"Hold it in place," she says as she gets up to give Foggy her perch on the edge of the sofa. She takes the IV out of Matt's arm before removing her gloves and gathering up her things. "I have to go back to work. We're already understaffed, and long lunches aren't exactly encouraged under the best of circumstances."

For the first time, Foggy realizes she's wearing hospital scrubs.

"Wait. You're leaving? You can't leave."

"I have to go," she repeats.

"What am I supposed to do?" Foggy asks around the rising panic.

"I'm going to give him something to help with the pain," she says. "The best thing I can recommend at this point is rest, since he's too much of an idiot to go to the hospital. Give his body a chance to heal. So he's going to be out for the next several hours."

"You can't leave," Foggy says again.

"He shouldn't wake up for a good long while. At least I hope not." She expertly fills a second syringe and injects Matt with the morphine. "God knows he won't let me do that again anytime soon," she says. "Switch out the ice packs and pay attention to his breathing. Check on that side wound from time to time and make sure the bleeding doesn't start up again."

"Okay. Seriously. You can't leave."

"Seriously, I have to."

"What about Matt? I thought you cared about him."

"He has you," she says with a smile. "Call me if you have any questions."

"I have questions now," Foggy says. "I have a fuck-ton of questions."

"Medical questions," she clarifies. "And when he wakes up, if you think of it, please tell him I'll be by later to check on him."

"He said it didn't work out between you. He said you'd gone."

"Yeah," she sighs. "Something like that." She leans over the back of the couch and gently brushes back Matt's hair. "Stupid, stubborn..." she whispers before kissing his forehead. The gesture is so filled with longing and sadness Foggy has to blink back sudden tears.

Matt hadn't lied about that after all.

"Oh, and Foggy," she says from over her shoulder. "Go easy on him when you kick his ass, okay. I don't want to have to redo all those stitches." She gives him a little smile and walks out the door.

Matt's living room looks like a war zone. He sees the black mask crumpled on the floor and gets up from the couch in a hurry.

"I finally see," he says to Matt. "I see said the blind man."


	4. Getting to Know You

**Getting to Know You, Getting to Know All About You**

* * *

_A/N: Missing first stop on Foggy and Karen's bar-crawl in "Cut Man" (1.2), or Foggy decides how to much to share and doesn't end up telling her quite a bit, including what it's like to go apartment hunting with Matt._

* * *

"Should we try calling Matt again?" Karen asks. She smiles at Foggy over the top of her pint, and Foggy wants to pretend for just a second that her insistence on including him is general job insecurity, not her obvious crush on Foggy's very good looking best friend.

"We'll give it a couple more minutes." Foggy takes another swallow of the Scottish ale. It's cold and smooth even though it has little bits that will eventually float to the bottom of the glass. Foggy thinks fondly of damp drizzle and green hills and cuddling under an afghan. "It's really just as well he's missing this part of our evening anyway," Foggy continues with a shrug. "Matt totally would have tricked you into eating a salad too."

"Foggy!" She throws a tiny remnant of french fry in his direction. "I said I wasn't hungry! And I wasn't. You totally tricked me into eating that burger."

Foggy smiles and nods, entirely unapologetic. Sure, she said she wasn't hungry, but girls always say they aren't hungry. He'd noticed that despite offering, several times, to get food for both him and Matt, she hadn't eaten anything herself all day. So he'd ordered the sliders, casually pushed the plate so it was sitting in between them, and kept his big mouth shut as she started nibbling first french fries, still sizzling from the grease, and then one, and then a second, burger, thick with crisp lettuce leaves and slices of tomato and the most awesome dill pickles this side of 57th Street.

"What can I say? I know my meat."

Karen snorts ale and shakes her head. "You probably shouldn't say that to people. They might get the wrong idea."

"Point taken. But it was awesome, wasn't it? And really bad for you. All that butter on the grilled buns? So good! Talk about a heart-attack waiting to happen. Matt, he would have pushed a salad. Turned this whole pleasant start of our night into something filled with virtue and good nutrition."

"Listen. Foggy." Karen shreds the damp napkin under her pint and doesn't look at him.

Here we go, Foggy thinks.

"About Matt. This job is important to me. And Matt's been so nice. Both of you have been, really. I can't ever repay you for what you did for me. But you're an open book. I already feel like I've known you forever. Matt, on the other hand..." Her voice trails off.

"More complicated? A closed book written in Russian Braille?"

"Yes," she agrees with a smile that reminds Foggy how young and sweet she is. When she smiles at him like that, he almost doesn't care that she teases him the way she would an older, favorite cousin. "I've never personally known someone who's blind, and I don't want to do something horribly wrong or hurtful without realizing it. I want to be helpful."

"So we're really doing this? The Being With the Blind, 101?" He leans closer and fake-whispers. "That's what Matt calls blind-lessons."

"Yes. Please. Help."

Foggy swallows the rest of his pint and motions to the waitress to bring another round. Her interest certainly isn't anything new. People are always asking Foggy about Matt because as friendly as the guy is, he keeps his cards close to his chest. People see Foggy, whose foot is permanently residing in his mouth, as some kind of fount of Matt-knowledge, incapable of not spilling secrets.

Normally, Foggy doesn't say much. Oh sure, it's hard sometimes because he wants to gush to someone, maybe even everyone, about how incredibly awesome Matt is. He wants to shout it from the rooftops that he won the fucking best friend lottery the day Matt walked into room 312. But he doesn't spill the beans. Not about Matt. Matt is... different. Special. Matt makes him bristle with protective instincts. But Karen must be someone special too or Matt wouldn't have taken her home with him.

Foggy was stunned speechless, not something that happens very often, when Matt offered her an invitation to spend the night. Although, looking back, Foggy shouldn't have been surprised. Matt chose her the second they sat down across from her in that interrogation room, the same way he chose Foggy. In a breath, a heartbeat, he'd decided she belonged with them, and that was that.

"Here's the thing," Foggy finally says. Karen leans toward him, and Foggy thinks she'd be taking notes if she paper and a pen. "I've asked around, and some of this stuff is general living with a blind guy safety tips, like always remember to push in chairs, and tell him right away if you rearrange the furniture, even just a little bit, like shifting your desk out of the way of the afternoon glare coming in from the window."

"You sound like someone speaking from experience?" she quietly says.

Foggy swallows a grimace. He had learned a lot of this their first few weeks together, when he just wasn't thinking that dude, his roommate was fucking blind. Matt was always really nice about it. He seemed more sorry than Foggy did even though he was the one sprawled on the floor or clutching his foot.

"What else?" she asks.

"Well," Foggy thinks. "It'll probably be going against your instincts, but try not to grab onto him unless you think it's a life-or-death situation. He prefers to be the one doing the holding on to someone's arm if he needs to. Which he doesn't, not nearly as much as you think he should. I don't know, Karen. It's just habit for me by now. And honestly, a lot of this is just going to be learning how to be around Matt. He's a weird dude."

"Foggy!"

"I say that with all the affection, Karen. And it's not a secret. I would say it in front of him, if he were sitting here. I do say it in front of him. All the time. I love the guy, but he can be kind of freaky sometimes."

"I'm going to need some evidence to support such a serious accusation, counselor," she teases.

Fresh pints arrive and their empty plate is cleared away. Dessert is offered, which Karen declines but Foggy orders the apple crisp because, like the burger and fries, she doesn't know what she's missing. It is as unassumingly awesome as the dill pickles. Also, it will go nicely with the ale, and, also like the burger and fries, she says she doesn't want any, but she will eat more than her half when it appears, swimming in a pool of melting vanilla bean ice cream.

Foggy's not nearly as clueless as he sometimes pretends to be.

"Here's one for you," he continues. "The salad thing."

"Foggy, eating salad isn't weird. It's healthy."

"Sure, I get that. But why do I have to eat them too? Why does he care whether or not I eat a salad instead of something else? Sometimes I let him guilt me into it because I know it's for my own good. And sometimes I don't because Jesus, enough already with the organic produce. He's worse than a crack dealer, especially if it's local, pushing it on you, all 'You know you want it.' How you handle that is entirely your call."

"Nope," Karen laughs and shakes her head. "I'm not accepting that as evidence of anything weird or freaky. I'm overruling it."

"On what grounds?"

"Um."

She bites her bottom lip while she thinks, and Foggy sort of hopes Matt stays where ever it is he's disappeared to. Maybe he went to the gym and can't hear his phone. Maybe he has a date, or maybe he's soaking in the tub. As long as he's okay, and Foggy worries but knows he probably is, Foggy doesn't really care at the moment.

"I don't know. I've only been a legal secretary for day."

"Yeah, but come on," Foggy teases. "You've watched _Law and Order_, haven't you? Make something up. Run with it! Own it!"

"Just tell me something else about Matt."

The apple crisp arrives, and he doesn't even have to ask for two spoons or set it in the middle of the table. He sits back and watches Karen ease a spoon into it, releasing steam and a delicate waft of cinnamon and sweetness. She closes her eyes as she savors her bite. Foggy knows well and appreciates the juxtaposition of hot and cold, smooth and crunchy, sweet and tart.

"This is the best thing ever," she says.

"So glad we didn't order any. How terrible would that have been?" Foggy nods and digs his spoon into the dessert and takes a too-big bite.

"Foggy. Dammit."

"I know," he agrees. "I totally suck. As a lawyer. At cheering people up. At ordering food in restaurants."

She laughs and their spoons playfully duel over the bowl, complete with Foggy making light saber sound effects.

"You were telling me something weird about Matt," she reminds him.

Foggy sighs because she is worse than a dog worrying a bone, and he is not getting away from this line of questioning. "Fine. He thinks you stink."

"What? I smell bad?" Karen sticks her nose in her armpit and sniffs a lock of her hair. "I do not. I mean, sure, I smell a little bit like grease now, but I didn't before."

"I didn't say you smell bad. In fact, quite the contrary. I think you smell great. Very clean but still girly." Foggy wants to kick himself in the ass for saying something so lame. "I said Matt thinks you stink. But that's the weird thing. It's not that you smell, it's how much he's able to smell you."

"That doesn't make any sense." She's blushing so furiously, Foggy starts to wonder if a person can pass out from all their blood rushing away from their brains to the surface of their skin.

"He won't ever say anything because he doesn't. Not unless you catch him when he's drunk or really tired. Or both, actually. He's normally really good at not answering questions."

"Yeah. I've noticed that."

"I saw this documentary once about the blind brain, and it sort of explained it. See, your visual cortex takes up a lot of space in your head. Not all the time, but sometimes, when someone is blind, since that part of the brain doesn't have anything to do anymore, the other parts have room to expand."

"That makes sense." She takes another bite and leans back in the booth. "I think I'm going to burst. Because he doesn't see, he's more sensitive in other ways?"

"Yes!" Foggy smiles, remembers Matt calling his senses delicate, and has to take the final bit of apple crisp to keep from telling Karen that little detail. That word's not for her. "And smells drive him especially crazy."

"Why does he live in Hell's Kitchen? This place, especially after it rains? Gag. It's enough to knock me over sometimes."

"He's in love with this city," Foggy quietly says. "And there's no sense trying to reason with the heart." Foggy clears his throat and quickly continues, afraid he's revealed too much. "So your perfume or laundry detergent or even shampoo? Yeah, he can smell it in his office. Things like that start to get to him. You'll want to switch to fragrance free and be sure to brush your teeth because he will know if you skip."

"Who comes to work without brushing their teeth?" Karen asks with a smile.

"Um. No one reasonable, of course. Gross. And it should go without saying to stay away from scented candles or incense or those little dishes of smelly things girls like to put on window sills or spicy garlic shrimp take-out accidentally left on the desk over the weekend."

"You didn't, Foggy?"

"Yeah. It was at the fancy law office where we used to intern. We had this windowless shoebox of an office, too. There was no air flow. It stunk up the entire floor."

"Did you have to leave because of the rancid shrimp?"

"No." Foggy takes a long swallow of his ale.

"Noted," she says when she realizes Foggy isn't going to say more on the subject. "No potpourri or rancid take-out. Also, good to know my boss thinks I stink."

"Just one of your bosses," Foggy corrects her. "I stand by my earlier observation that you smell really nice."

"What else?" she quickly asks. Too quickly, Foggy thinks. "Tell me something else about Matt."

"You're going to want to touch his things," Foggy says, as much to alleviate her curiosity as to distract him from the fact that she obviously doesn't want Foggy to go anywhere near complimenting her. She's here with him, sure. She thinks he's nice and funny. But she's eager for Matt to join them. Maybe not even just because she likes him, but so it's a group and not just her and Foggy.

"Foggy," she bursts into laughter.

"Don't bother denying it. I used to live with the guy. I know you'll try to deny it, but it will become an obsession. A compulsion. You'll just have to run your fingers over his books or the computer terminal or his watch and wonder how the fuck he reads that shit."

"His watch is Braille? They make those?"

"How else would he know what time it is?"

"Now that is kind of weird."

"I tell you he can smell your deodorant from his office and you just nod your head, but you think his Braille watch is weird? Oh Karen, Karen. You're going to fit in just fine. My point is that you should go ahead and touch things. Get it out of your system. But do it knowing no matter how careful you are, he knows. He always knows."

"Does it make him mad?"

"No. but he'll give you the ol' stink eye to let you know he knows."

"He wears sunglasses, Foggy. How does he give stink eyes?"

"One of the universe's unanswerable questions, Karen. Matt Murdock is a mystery."

* * *

_"Oh my God, Matt, these stairs!" Foggy huffed as they climbed what felt like a staircase to the sky. "This is bad, dude, even by Hell's Kitchen walk-up standards. Is it some kind of weird Catholic penance thing 'cause I am not Catholic, and I can't take it."_

_ "Keep going, Foggy," Matt encouraged, not sounding even slightly winded, the cheerful bastard. "We're almost there. Top floor."_

_ "You are going to have some 'splainin' to do, if you go through with this. My mom was not kidding when she said she wanted you to move into the apartment that just opened up down the hall."_

_ "She was definitely not kidding. But you know, she didn't mean just me."_

_ "Please don't remind me," Foggy begged. "If she had her way, we'd be sleeping in a bunk bed in my old room. I can't live in my mom's building. I'd never get laid again."_

_ "But you expect me to live there?" Matt asked._

_ "Dude, she's not your mom. And I still don't see why you don't like that two-bedroom we looked at. It was nice. Spacious. Newly renovated. On the second floor, for the love of all that is holy." __Foggy paused on the landing and glanced up to see how much farther they had to go._

_ "For a sighted man, the amount of things you don't see astonishes me."_

_ "Harsh." _

_ Matt was quick to smile and pat Foggy's arm. He nodded towards the stairs and they kept going up. "Besides," Matt said. "You can't miss me yet. You just got rid of me."_

_ "That was crappy student housing that happened to be included with our scholarships. Our own place would be awesome. A couple of swingin' bachelors, you and me, young lawyers out on the town? Come on, Matt!" _

_ "Aren't you looking forward to throwing your towels on the floor and leaving random glassware laying about?"_

_ "Well, yeah," Foggy admitted. "Except by now it's habit. I've given up my slovenly ways. Well, mostly. You've domesticated me."_

_ "Your wife can thank me one day," Matt laughed._

_ "Matt. Listen to me. Seriously." Foggy stopped on the stairs and turned towards his best friend. His blind best friend. "What if...?" he quietly began to ask, not able to keep the worry from his voice._

_ "You do realize you channel your mother sometimes, don't you?" Matt interrupted before Foggy could list all the many things that could go terribly and hopelessly awry. "As I keep reminding you, I'll be fine. I can take care of myself."_

_ "Yeah, I know that. But Matt..."_

_ "Foggy, you need your own space, and so do I. We will spend our days together, at least we will as soon as we find an office, and we will surely pass a lot of evenings and weekends together too. There will be times when you won't want to look at me anymore. Certainly not when you bring someone home with you."_

_ "But you know how I like to watch your mad-skills with your lady-callers."_

_ Matt laughed. "That's a terrible thing to say, Foggy. So much for my powers of domestication. Besides, there have never been nearly as many lady-callers as you like to think."_

_ "Dude, don't be a buzzkill and ruin all my fantasies."_

_ "Why are you fantasizing about my imaginary love life anyway?"_

_ "Because you get more offers in a week than I will in my lifetime. It's not my fault you're a freak show and drive them all away. It's like you beat them off with your cane, not that that would stop a lot of them. In fact, I think that secretary over at Cravatch would pay big bucks for you to beat her with your cane."_

_ "Oh, Foggy."_

_ "Just sayin'. Something to keep in mind if you need to supplement your income or the whole law-thing doesn't work out for you."_

_ "For us, you mean," Matt reminded him._

_ "That's exactly what I mean," Foggy agreed, all teasing gone from his voice. "Us. Nelson and Murdock. We're a team, Matt. Maverick and Goose. You don't need to get your own place."_

_ "I do. I am." Matt turned to face Foggy so Foggy could see his serious-face. _

_ "I know that look," Foggy sighed in resignation. "I am wasting my breath trying to argue with that look."_

_ "Thank you for seeing things my way. I've done my research, and I think this is the one. I'm just asking you, as my best friend who knows me better than anyone, to give me your honest opinion before I sign the lease."_

_ "Yeah, yeah. First you reject me, then you try and butter me up."_

_ "Foggy."_

_ "Maybe I'll get over it if you invite me over to watch the caning orgies?"_

_ "Foggy," Matt sighed again, but Foggy knew he really didn't mind. _

_ "Don't spoil things by telling me the girl-smells linger."_

_ "They do," Matt insisted. _

_ "I repeat: freak show. Your average fawning female has smell better than me, and you smell me all the time. That can't be a picnic, yet somehow you manage."_

_ "I'm used to you. It's not distracting anymore. Unless there's garlic shrimp. Or you've been to dinner at Aunt Marge's."_

_ "The cats?" Foggy asked with a sympathetic nod._

_ "Jesus, the cats."_

_ "All right. This is it. Shit, man, that is a lot of stairs."_

_ "The entire building has high ceilings. Ensures I won't be bothered by ambivalent guests causally dropping by."_

_ "I'm not sure I'm ever climbing them again either," Foggy told him. "I prefer to get my exercise the old fashioned way."_

_ "You mean not at all?" Matt teased._

_ "Yeah, you're so not worth it."_

_ "Mr. Murdock?" a beautiful, dark haired woman opened the door to apartment 6A. "I'm Charlotte Mason. We spoke on the phone."_

_ She held out her hand to shake, but Matt just stood there, smiling pleasantly. Foggy knew he knew it was there. Matt is usually quick to offer his hand first to avoid this kind of awkward hanging. Unless that's exactly what he's going for because he wants to deniably put the other person on the defensive._

_ "Hand," Foggy whispered loud enough for Charlotte to hear, well-practiced at this particular game of 'Yep, he's really blind. Don't you feel a bit like a shit now?' _

_ "Please call me Matthew," he told Charlotte, all charm as he took her hand in his. Charlotte blushed and put her other hand on top of his and held on longer than was polite. Even Foggy could smell her perfume, and inwardly he cringed at the thought of Matt scrubbing his hands raw washing her scent off of him as soon as they left. _

_ "I have to tell you," she confided as she opened the door. "This place is a steal. This much square footage for the price? It's not going to stay on the market for long."_

_ "Why is it vacant then?" Foggy asked as they walked through into the living area._

_ "I was going to tell you about that," Matt said._

_ "There was a... misunderstanding... with the zoning next door." Charlotte gestured unnecessarily toward the large windows in explantion._

_ "Fuck," Foggy muttered._

_ "What are we looking at?" Matt asked. _

_ "Huge-ass LED billboard spitting distance from your very tall windows. Astronauts can see this sign from space."_

_ "How bad is it?" Matt's fingers ghosted across the old panes of glass, and Foggy knew it was a lost cause. Matt was touching the place like he was already in love and committing every inch of it to memory. _

_ Foggy sighed and turned so he could watch the colors swirl across the living room floor. It looked like a nightclub. It looked like an LSD trip. It would give you the spins if you sat there cold stone sober and stared at the shifting patterns._

_ "No way you could have a tv in here," Foggy honestly answered. _

_ "I guess it's a good thing I don't watch tv," Matt said with a smile. "Charlotte, would you mind walking me around the space?"_

_ Foggy swallowed his groan because that is one of Matt's go-to lines, and it always works. Matt can get himself around a room just fine, thank you very much, but there are times he asks someone to show him around. It makes the other person immediately feel both powerful and trusted, while also making sure they feel just a little bit of sympathy for the blind guy. Plus, Matt then gets to touch gorgeous women, even if they are wearing too much perfume. They're always beautiful, lucky bastard._

_ While she guided him around, extolling the apartment's various features, Foggy stood in the middle of the room and closed his eyes and listened, really listened. It was nearly 7:00 at night, which meant people were home from work, but it was too early for them to be headed out or going to bed. The witching hour, probably the noisiest the apartment will get._

_ "It's quiet," he finally said when Matt was done with his tour and charming Charlotte half-way out of her stilettos. She was not eager to let go of his arm, and it took a pointed look from Foggy before she excused herself and walked toward the kitchen area to give them some semblance of privacy._

_ "Double brick walls," Matt said. "Only two units per floor."_

_ "Which means no one will hear you when you're lying dead on the floor, screaming for help."_

_ "How am I going to be both dead and screaming, Foggy?" Matt asked with a grin._

_ "Details."_

_ "Unusually tall ceilings," Matt continued, sighing with contentment as he raised his face to the wooden beams he couldn't see. "They don't make them like this anymore."_

_ "Not again with the crushing on the city, man. I swear, Hell's Kitchen is your one true love, but she is a vicious mistress. She will take your money and swallow your dreams and then kick you when you're down."_

_ "I love it when you talk dirty to me," Matt teased, nudging him in the side. _

_ "Freak show," Foggy muttered. _

_ "You should know better than to try and reason with a man's heart."_

_ Foggy sighed again in defeat and breathed deeply through his nose. "A lot of take-out places nearby, but the smell isn't overwhelming," Foggy added. "Top floor in the corner, so not that many shared walls. Nice wooden beams in the ceiling. Makes it feel homey, you know? Warms up the exposed brick walls. Won't seem too weird when you don't hang anything up."_

_ "Are you trying to get a date with my new apartment?" Matt beamed at him. "'Cause she's spoken for."_

_ "Well, there are these pretty arch-things over the windows."_

_ "Arch-things? Really, Foggy? What kind of pick-up line is that?"_

_ Foggy eyed the staircase leading up the tall ceiling. "What's the security like for the roof access?" he asked Charlotte._

_ "This is the original entry point," she replied, all business now that she's not drooling over Matt. "But there's another from the stairwell now, so workmen would never need to use it."_

_ She was as good as not answering questions as Matt. Foggy jogged up the stairs to look at the door. _

_ "I love the roof access," Matt said. "Don't mess with my roof access."_

_ "It's a good, solid door," he called down to Matt. "But I'll get someone to beef up the lock. And Charlotte? The light fixtures suck."_

_ "I'm not too worried about that," Matt grins. _

_ "Just because you aren't going to use them doesn't mean you should pay full price when they suck. If you actually needed to see, you'd be screwed without a crap-ton of lamps."_

_ "We can take that into consideration," Charlotte said as Foggy rejoins them. _

_ "Along with the fact that the living room looks like a disco ball?" Foggy gestured to the swirling colors on the floor. "He may have overnight guests who object to the floodlight right outside the windows when they're trying to sleep."_

_ "Foggy," Matt scolded, but Charlotte only eye-fucked Matt like she would just love to spend the night and not sleep as soon as he signed the lease. _

_ "Dude, do you even have any furniture?" _

_ "Details," Matt said like this was already a done-deal. "Let's see these considerations in writing, Charlotte," he said without any trace of irony before turning back to face Foggy. "And don't get any funny ideas because you are not barricading my rooftop door. I'm already imaging unwinding at the end of a long day with a beer, admiring my city."_

_ "You're blind, buddy."_

_ "Thanks for reminding me. You'll have to describe my view so I know exactly what I'm not-looking at."_

_ "Great, now I have to worry about you plummeting to your death from the roof." Foggy looked over at Matt and sighed. "I just channeled my mom again, didn't I?"_

_ "Yeah. Sure did. I love you, too."_

* * *

"He knows I hate it when he doesn't answer my calls," Foggy mutters, glaring at his phone when Matt's immediately went to voicemail again.

"He was right when he called you a mother hen," Karen says with a smile. "You do sound just like a mom."

"Whatever. I just..." Foggy's voice trails off.

"Worry about him?" Karen quietly offers.

Foggy shrugs. "I know he doesn't need me to. Matt's just fine, trust me. But he can be." Foggy abruptly stops talking again and raises his empty pint to his mouth just so he won't say something he regrets.

Sure, Matt let Karen stay at his place when they thought there was a good chance she would be visited by a professional killer, but that doesn't mean he's okay with her knowing about. Well. Anything, really.

"He's a loner," Foggy finally decides to say because it seems kind to gently wave her off if he can.

"I find that hard to believe," Karen says.

Foggy shrugs. "It's true. His choice, I might add, but that doesn't make it less real. His dad died when he was a kid, so he was raised at St. Agnes Orphanage. I know it's this really nice place, but still."

"My God." Karen swallows. "That's really sad."

"Look, I know he'd rather I didn't tell you this. But it's public record. You'd be stupid not to Google-search both of us in the not-too-distant future. For all you know, we're serial killers."

"Would that show up on a Google-search?" Karen asks with a little smile.

"Fair point," Foggy agrees. "It's just. Well, since you're going to be working with us every day, you should know that for all his many loveable qualities, Matt is hard to get to know. Don't take it personally if he uses his irresistible charm to keep you at arm's length. He likes to be alone."

"Foggy, no one likes to be alone."

Foggy half-nods, half-shrugs because while her words ring true for most people, he's not sure they apply to Matt.

"Enough about us," he says. "We weren't going to think, remember? This is suddenly way too serious. Let's settle the bill and move on to stop number two. The night is." Foggy glances at his watch. "Jesus, not young. Not young at all. And sadly, neither am I." He yawns into the back of his hand. "More libations before I curl up in this booth and take a nap. But your introduction to the neighborhood won't be complete until we go to a couple more places."

"Do you think Matt will call back?"

"Matt who?" Foggy asks. "I'm ready to learn more about you."

"There's nothing to know," Karen obviously lies. "I live her now. I have the best bosses, who are not serial killers, in the city. We are going to do amazing work and help people."

Matt can surely pick them, Foggy thinks as Karen smiles that sweet smile at him and doesn't tell him a goddamn thing.

"Getting to know you," he sings loud enough for people to turn and glare because he knows it will make her laugh, and he isn't going to push her. Not yet, anyway. At least not until they have more drinks. He'll take this nice and slow. "Getting to know all about you."

"Foggy," Karen laughs.

"Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me."

She laughs so hard she has to wipe away tears when Foggy stops and smiles at her.

"What?" he asks. "You think I only know _Pirates?_"

* * *

_A/N: I should have done this before I posted 4 stories to the fandom, but I'm subscribing to the Better Late Than Never school of philosophy: It's probably pretty clear I'm not sailing a particular 'ship at the moment, content to enjoy all the various potential and crackling energy and feels, no matter where I find them. I have a couple more stories bouncing around (a Claire POV, a Matt), but I am open to suggestion if there's something you'd like to see. I can't guarantee that 1) I'll write it, or 2) that you'll like what I write if I do, but I promise to take any ideas under advisement._


	5. Radioactive

**Radioactive**

* * *

_A/N: Expanded/Missing scene at Claire's friend's apartment from the beginning of "In the Blood" (1.4). It ends where the episode picks up because I didn't have much more to add at that point._

_I have been thinking a lot about Claire, about the kind of person she must be to make some of the choices she has. Here's my (current) working theory. _

_You may have noticed I upped the rating to M. I assume we're all grown-ups here (please don't tell me if you're not), but I will tell you that while there isn't 'shippy, smutty deliciousness (this is supposed to be canonland, after all), this installment does contain descriptions of grown-up variety unpleasantness and maybe just a touch of other niceties that aren't intended for young eyes._

* * *

Claire steals a glace at the clock and groans. She wishes she were still sleeping. If he comes, it won't be until later. Much later. Not that she's doing anything more to arrange her life for him. She just knows from experience there's no sense in trying to get away from nocturnal habits, not for only a day or two of forced staycation while he sorts out the Russians.

That sounds insane, even when the words stay safely and silently inside her head. She's hiding out, waiting for a blind, masked vigilante-type to sort out some Russian mobsters so it's safe for her to go home. Only in New York.

She reaches for a tissue and blows her nose, ruefully shaking her head because she had to call in fake sick for this little side-show, but if she stays in this cat-hair infested apartment much longer, she really will be.

Claire closes her eyes and turns to her memories of the Battle of New York the way she assumes teenage boys sift through mental catalogs of beautiful women when they're lying in their beds, trying to sleep. Not that she gets off on the carnage, nothing like that. She is many things that would make her grandmother cross herself and start up with the rosary, but monster isn't one of them. No, she just finds the clarity that only comes in a crisis soothing. Not that she would ever admit that to anyone. They'd nod like they understand, maybe, if she described the peaceful sense of really being alive and having a purpose that inevitably accompanies her heightened awareness when all hell has broken loose. Then they'd walk away and never look at her again.

But something tells her he would get it. Him. Mike. Trouble with a capital T with his bruised knuckles and his heart-breaker smile. Something tells her he would know exactly what she was talking about.

She doesn't mind that he didn't tell her his name. At least he hasn't lied to her yet. But no. She's not thinking about him right now. She's going to relax and go back to sleep.

When the portal opened over Hell's Kitchen, Claire was showering in the staff room at the hospital, washing off the sweat and grime of another double-shift before she headed home. When the frantic call for all-hands-on-deck blasted from the speaker, she threw on clean scrubs without toweling off and pulled back her wet hair as she ran to the ER.

The TVs had all tuned into live coverage of the city being blown apart. More specifically, this neighborhood. A beam of light rained down warrior aliens from the sky as people stood there with open mouths and stared in stunned disbelief. But already the wounded were coming in.

"I can't ask you to say," the head of the ER had said when she saw Claire. Claire rolled her eyes, and there was a nod and a grim smile in response. "Run triage," she said. "No one sorts 'em like you."

Claire stuffed her pockets with latex gloves and got to work.

Broken bones, go over there. Head injuries, over there. Surface wounds, wait there. Possible internal bleeding, over to the ultrasounds.

In a lot of ways, Claire missed the Battle even though she was close enough to taste the dust of destruction and the tang of leached chemicals on her tongue. She only saw the patient directly in front of her. And then the next one. And the one after that. Over and over, one after another, until everything else disappeared and time ceased to exist and there was only her wading through a sea of never-ending, present tense injuries.

Some of the people who surged into the hospital weren't hurt, not physically at least, but still they came, seeking sanctuary as aliens, actual, for-real, motherfucking aliens, not to mention dragon-looking things, and then the super-heroes who ended up saving the day, swooped through the sky and buildings spewed concrete and steel and broken glass. She was too focused on the person in front of her to look out the window to see for herself the alien army and the pet dragons they brought along to battle. She was calm and systematic and thorough as she marshaled supplies and gave orders and decided the immediate fate of the wounded brought before her.

Like the nurses and staff sent to help from other areas of the hospital, she pressed civilians into duty, the ones with any kind of medical training or who were in the ER only because they didn't know where else to go. No one with able hands stood idle. Not while she was on watch. There were lost kids and disoriented old people to shepherd to the chapel for the priests and social workers to sort out and bottles of water to pass out and smaller cuts to clean and bandage and endless trips to the supply closet for disinfectant and adhesive glue and gloves as Claire tried to keep from cross-contaminating her patients. The ambulances kept arriving, and neighbors carried in make-shift stretchers, and complete strangers staggered in under the weight of each other in the chaos of the attack.

That's the beauty of moments like that, the peace she's desperate to recapture and hold onto as she sighs and shifts and tries to go back to sleep on borrowed sheets that make her eyes sting. She appreciates the way people come together in a crisis. Rich or poor, black or white, male or female or both or neither, none of that matters because, during the Battle, they were all just people. There's no room for petty egos, hospital politics be damned, and everyone forgets, at least temporarily, the things they want to do or the person they wish they could be. You just step the fuck up and get the job done and know when to stay out of the way for someone else. "Minor laceration, there;" "dislocated shoulder, there;" "crushed pelvis, there."

Blood is blood, and Claire wishes more things were that simple.

She tosses and turns in her friend's bed that leaves her skin feeling hot and tight and itchy. She saw him on the news, the kid Mike saved. The Russians certainly picked a cute one, with those big eyes and dark ringlets. In the resilient way of children, he even grinned for the cameras when he explained how nice man in the black mask was. He offered shadow punches and sound-effects as he told of the crashes and blows he heard behind the locked door, how the nice man carried him through the hallway of beat up bad guys and took him home. He spoke of Mike with awe in his voice, unwavering in his unspoken, innocent conviction that he was saved by an Angel sent to protect him. People assumed the poor kid was terrified and dehydrated and hallucinating, but Claire wouldn't put a hallway full of Russian mobsters past him.

Claire stayed awake all that night, waiting for Mike, but he never showed. She wonders how much blood he lost as payment for returning that little boy to his dad. He was in no condition to do anything more taxing than laying on a sofa, not after losing all that blood and the row of fresh stitches she put in his abdominal wall. She isn't sure how he walked away from that rooftop without injuring himself, let alone carried a child home or fought through a hallway of Russians mobsters.

Then again, there's a reason she decided to call him Mike, and it isn't lying scumbag Mike O'Connell, like she told him. She still doesn't know why she said that when she was thinking about St. Michael as he laid there bleeding onto her couch. St. Michael was the angel who led the charge during the battle for heaven and drove Lucifer and the fallen angels to the gates of hell. She knows that much from Sundays at her grandmother's and the hours she spent amusing herself with the richly illustrated guide to the saints and martyrs. St. Michael, Mike, defender of the faithful against the forces of evil. Protector of the people. Yeah, he's a Mike all right.

And even before she knew their world had things like mystical alien hammers and big green monsters and guys who got turned into freedom-defending beefcakes, she would've believed Mike when he said he could tell when people are lying. Because she can too. Claire sees the white-hot, radioactive center of the things that matter. She nods along and pays lip service to the lies people tell her in the curtained off exam areas of the ER while her fingers find the truth of what really happened in the clotted blood or the torn muscle or the swelling jaw. People lie all the time, for all kinds of reasons, but bodies don't. They always reveal their secrets if you know what you're feeling for.

Claire knows when a kid broke his collar bone actually falling down the stairs, which absolutely sometimes happens, and when his mom or dad likes to smack him around and got carried away. She can feel the truth in the broken bone. So maybe to Mike, lies smell different or sound different. She's certainly not going to judge.

She hopes he knows she wasn't judging him right before he left, that she was lying when said she didn't believe him when he dangled the cop over the roof and said he liked it. She called someone she knows at the ICU to get the scoop on the guy. He's in a coma with machines keeping him alive, and she's not losing any sleep over her part in it. She didn't even feel guilty when the nurse mentioned the stab wound to the eye she told Mike exactly how to inflict. He's blind and could have accidentally lobotomized the guy, for fuck's sake, and still, she doesn't feel badly. She only feels badly because she doesn't feel badly, and she suspects that's more her grandmother's conscious than any part of hers.

She's seen too much working nights in the ER. She's seen exactly what depths people will stoop to in order to hurt each other, the stabbings and the shootings and all the other sharp, awful, ugly things that go bump in the night and find their way to the ER.

Claire calls in the counselors when she's done piecing the bodies back together because that's hospital protocol, but she understands the futility of it. She wanted that dirty cop to scream in agony because she knows he was telling the truth: there will always be another bloody body, another broken heart, another lost soul. She will never stop patching up the people this merciless city preys upon and spits out and leaves for dead, and it will never end. There will always be another victim. And another. And another one after that.

She treats each patient with the skilled but impersonal compassion she would want if she were in their shoes and gets some satisfaction that at least the broken bone is set or the skin stitched back together or the infection staved off. She tells herself the things she does to help heal their bodies matters, is the only thing that matters in the present tense of the crisis at hand, and doesn't let herself think beyond that. If she stopped looking at the wound right in front of her, if she dared to catch a glimpse of the vastness of the dark corners where danger lurks, waiting, always waiting for the next opportunity to strike, she knows she would give up. And that is simply not an option.

And she thinks maybe that's at least part of why Mike puts on a mask to beat back the darkness and save just one boy. And then another. And another one after that. She doesn't know any of the details, of course. He doesn't want her to. But she suspects Mike's a man who knows first-hand that there's only so much the law can do. A restraining order is the same as any other piece of paper. When it's dark and you're backed into a corner and fighting for your life, a piece of paper doesn't change anything. A piece of paper can't save you. But a good man who puts on a mask can.

And Mike is a good man. She knows that as surely as any other truth she's ever felt burn its way into her bones. She hopes he isn't lying awake feeling guilty about that asshole he dropped into a coma. The cop made his choice, and he chose to be on the side of the devils who snatch the kids, rather than the angels who protect them. He got what was coming to him.

She just wishes she knew what kind of shape Mike was in after he set things right.

He's fine, she tells herself. He's fine because he knows where she is, and he hasn't come by. He wouldn't need to unless he was hurt. It's not like they're friends. Sure, she doesn't understand how he could escape a hallway full of angry Russian mobsters lying in wait for him without getting hurt, but she doesn't get how he did that thing with the fire extinguisher either. The world is full of mysteries that defy explanation. Like how she can't stop herself from imagining dipping the tip of her tongue into one of his dimples, tasting the rasp of his stubble over the softness of his skin.

Claire groans aloud and feels her face flush with shame because she is such a cliché. The man is goddamn hero, and she's lying here, thinking about how that mask may as well be shining a spotlight on the lush poutiness of his lips. She's lusting after him like a teenage fangirl because of his movie-star good looks. She's better than this!

Oh, but he is beautiful. She's seen what he's capable of, felt the rage roiling off of him in furious waves, seen him strike another man's face with lightening speed, watched in horror as he threw that same man off the roof. But he's more than that. He's sweet, too. That irrepressible smile, how quick he is to laugh. The way he says her name so it sounds like a caress.

His knuckles were rough and calloused, but when she pulled off his gloves in her apartment, the pads of his fingertips were so soft. They're sensitive, too. She knows they must be, the way he touches things in order to see. Claire pulls off her tank top and drapes it over her face and tries to feel what he would if he were with her right now in this borrowed bed.

Her fingertips aren't anything like his. Hers are cracked from constant washing with strong soap. No amount of lotioning can ever replace the stripped moisture. The rough skin catches as she glides her hands across her body, not sliding smoothly like his would. But she feels how warm she is. Her skin is on fire, her breath caching in her throat as she brushes shy fingers against a single nipple, like it was an accident. She pinches it then, harder than she normally would, and she gasps against the little bite of pain before soothing it away with the heel of her hand.

She moves up to her neck, feels her heartbeat pounding beneath her fingers, before she moves down again. She forces herself to go slowly, to savor even though she knows her own body well, because he would take his time. His fingertips would drink her in, not want to miss a single, insignificant corner of her. He would run his fingers over all of her, exploring every curve and crevice. He would tease around her nipples, denying her the touch she craved, not allowing her to rush him, and smile when he dipped his tongue into her belly button. He'd find the scar on her hip and pillow his head on her thigh while she told him the story of how she got it.

He would be silken skin stretched over taut muscle. Playful teasing and hungry, sensual need. In another man, maybe this would seem like a contradiction. But not in him. Claire knows he is as deliciously complex as cayenne pepper sprinkled into creamy hot chocolate: sweet on the front end with flames of heat licking down her throat on the back end. He is both a warrior and a savior, a lover and a fighter. And Claire wants all of him. She wants the good Catholic boy worshiping her body and the restrained power of the masked vigilante taking exactly what he wants without mercy. She wants to taste every sharp contrast, lick the salt from his skin, and drag her fingernails down his back because she likes the idea of leaving her mark on him.

"Please," she would beg when it got to be too much, those pornographic fingers ghosting over her, teasing her until he is all she knows, all she feels, all she wants.

He would blow cold air across her sensitized skin, overwhelming her with sensation.

"Please."

He would laugh then, low and content, and kiss his way down until he was nestled between her thighs. His beard would be rough against her skin, but his tongue would be silken, obscene promises. His mouth's wetness would join hers until she was sodden, dripping and aching and needing him, all of him, only him. More.

Claire arches her back and feels her damp heat through her boxer shorts. She teases her clit with the fabric, denies herself what she wants. Her hips move of their own volition, seeking more than what she's given them. He would smile at her greediness, refuse to be hurried. She tries to hold off, lets the pressure mount, but she can't. She needs... God help her, she needs him.

Not able to resist any longer, she pushes down her shorts, buries two fingers she wishes belonged to someone else while her thumb works her into a writhing, wanton frenzy.

"Oh God!" she moans aloud as she rides out the best orgasm she's had in a long time. Maybe even forever. "Oh. God." She greedily sucks air into her lungs, wets her dry lips with her tongue, and slowly opens her eyes only to remember she put her shirt over her face.

"God," she says again, tossing aside her top. It's as good a name as any to call him, really.

Her breathing slowly starts to even out, and she smiles and lets out a little guilty giggle as she rolls over, happily spent. She will have to see about finding clean sheets. Later. Maybe now she can go back to sleep after all. But she's only just closed her eyes when she hears it, a soft but persistent tapping on the glass.

Bemoaning her lost afterglow, Claire adjusts her clothes and peers around the door into the living room. She can't stop from gasping when she sees him waiting on the fire escape. This is a coincidence, surely. He wasn't sitting out there, listening to her finger-fuck herself, politely waiting for her to get off before knocking.

But any hope she may have harbored that he didn't know what she'd been doing and had intentionally not interrupted vanishes when he tears the mask away from his face and delicately sniffs the air.

"Claire."

He stands close, only just not touching her, close enough to feel the heat from his body through her thin pajamas. Slowly, so slowly it's as if he's giving her all the time in the world to back away, he reaches for her hand. His gloves are rough against her wrist, but he holds her lightly, just a circle of thumb and middle finger. He brings her hand to his face and breathes deeply, moving her fingers to his nose until his stubble tickles and sends goosebumps up her arm.

He closes his eyes, the pink tip of his tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip, and he sways just a bit, pulling her between his legs.

"Claire," he whispers again, his breath warm against her hand.

He tosses aside his gloves and raises a bared hand to her face.

"May I?" he asks, his hand hovering while he waits for her permission.

"God, yes," she breathes. "Please."

He smiles then, dark and dirty, and cups her chin. His thumb is lazy as it strokes along her cheekbone, brushes the tip of her nose. He traces her top lip as softly as a kiss, but pushes just a little harder on the bottom. She nips it, can't stop herself, and sucks it into her mouth. His thumb is as soft as she remembers, and she swirls the tip with her tongue.

"Claire," he says again.

"I've been thinking about you," she confesses.

His face breaks into a wide, satisfied smile then. He once again closes his eyes and breathes deeply through his nose. She wonders what she smells like right after she comes to a man who smells cologne three floors down.

Oh Jesus. He's smelling her come.

"I mean the Russians," she hastily adds, taking a step back. His hand lingers in the air for just a second too long, as if he's hoping she'll come back, but the spell is broken.

Dammit, she is not stupid. She knows better.

"I saw the boy you saved on the news."

He tilts his head, and she thinks he's studying her even though his gaze is fixed somewhere just beyond her ear. It should be disquieting, how he's not-quite looking at her, but somehow it's not. Maybe because she knows he sees so much even when he's not looking.

God, he has beautiful eyes. She wonders what his eyelashes taste like.

He smiles then, as if he's deciding whether or not to bust her for lying so badly and obviously. That cocky grin tells her he knows precisely when her mind landed back in the gutter, and he licks his lips again, raises an eyebrow as her breath catches in her throat.

"Claire?"

No. No no and no. She doesn't even know his name.

"He said you carried him through a hallway full of unconscious Russians."

Still grinning, he shrugs, as if to say, 'Subtle subject change there' or maybe 'No biggie,' but he grimaces when he moves his shoulder. It's a just a flash of pain before his face returns to the pleasant, cheerful grin, but he's hurt. That's why he came tonight, because he needs her, as in needs her first-aide skills and not anything else, and here she is, practically rubbing against him like a cat in heat.

She absolutely knows better.

"Mike," she says, hoping he hears the apology in her voice. She steps back so she can see more of him. "You're hurt. You should have said something."

"I was distracted," he says, his voice low and rumbly and entirely unapologetic. "It's just a scratch. I wasn't going to bother you, but I couldn't get all the glass out."

"Glass?" she asks, all business when she sees the wet tear in his shirt.

"I got the big pieces," he says with a grin.

Trouble, she reminds herself. This man is Trouble with a capital T.

"Take off your shirt," she orders as she steps around him and heads for the kitchen sink to wash her hands. "Have a seat." She opens her bag and pulls on a pair of gloves. "Jesus, Mike." Her fingers are gentle as she probes the edges of the ugly gash. "This is not a scratch."

"Well, it's a Russian scratch."

"I can't feel any glass," she tells him.

"They're there," he says. "Shards. At least four, maybe five." He closes his eyes and tilts his head and listens. "Yeah, I still can't tell for sure."

"I will take your word on that." She pulls a syringe and a vial out of the bag.

"Whoa," he says, sounding alarmed for the first time. "What's that?"

"Lidocaine. You were unconscious last time. I can't flush glass out of your shoulder and then stitch it back together without numbing you first."

"No," he insists. "No drugs."

"Mike," she begins.

"I'm serious, Claire. This is a deal-breaker. I appreciate all you're doing, I really do, but I will walk out of here and take care of it myself if you insist."

She sets down the supplies and rubs her face with her forearm. "How will you take care of it yourself?" she asks.

"I can't not feel everything," he whispers, like he's sharing a shameful secret. "Not right now. I need to feel. Claire."

"It's going to hurt like a sonofabitch, you know that right?"

"I'm tougher than I look."

She sighs and leans back in her chair.

"Claire," he says again. "Please." Her resolving is wavering. "Please."

"Have it your way," she finally concedes.

"Thank you, Claire."

He reaches forward and brushes just the tips of his fingers against her cheek. She wonders if he says her name so often to make up for the fact that she can't say his at all. Or maybe he can tell she likes the way it sounds when he says it. Then he smiles that same easy smile even though she can only imagine how much the deep cut full of glass shards hurts. He leans back again, loose-limbed in the chair, as relaxed as if they were about to sit down to dinner.

"You're kind of a weird guy, Mike," she says as she holds a towel under the cut to catch the saline as she irrigates the wound, hoping to wash out the glass rather than go on a tweezer expedition for pieces too small to see.

"Does that bother you?" he quietly asks.

She has no intention of answering that one, and she's about to say as much when he cups her elbow in his resting left hand. There's really no use denying the way she feels his touch somewhere else entirely, somewhere much lower and extremely unprofessional. He grins and tips his head, mischievous and sweet, like he can't quite believe he's getting away with something so bold. It doesn't hamper her movements, though, his fingers softly stroking the sensitive skin of her inner arm, so she doesn't tell him to stop.

"How's that feel?" she finally asks.

He closes his eyes again and shifts his shoulder this way and that, the movement causing more blood to seep down his chest. While she waits for the verdict, she looks over the incisions from before. He's healed remarkably fast. No sign of inflammation or infection. The reddest part of him is not the knife-wound in his side, as she would have expected, but his nipples. She swallows around the terrible-idea of leaning forward and sucking one into her mouth, just to see if he tastes like she imagines, and focuses instead on the rippling muscles as he steadily breathes in and out.

"Yeah," he says. "You got it all."

"You positive?"

"Yes," he says with a definitive head nod.

"Because I don't want to sew you up only to have to rip it all out to fish out glass shards."

He leans forward, squeezing her elbow firmly, and is so close she can feel his breath on her lips. "You've very good," he says.

He sits back without kissing her, and it's really all for the best, she tells herself, because she has work to do. And she knows better.

She sets aside the ruined towel and rummages in her bag for a suture kit. She tries not to notice how his hand hangs in space, waiting to hold her elbow again. She tries to pretend she doesn't need his fingers on her elbow, soothing her as she sews, as if he knows exactly how hard it will be for her to hurt him and he wants to make her feel better about it.

"I hope to God you've had your tetanus shot," she says instead of trying to convince him to let her numb him. She rests her elbow in his open palm like that's exactly where it's supposed to be, takes a deep breath, and slides the needle into his skin.

"What do you think I am?" he teases. "Some kind of martyr?"

"Well, you have been busy."

* * *

_A/N: These stories have been coming fast and furious, but I'm about to bugger off and deal with house guests. I will be back. Promise._


	6. I See Said the Blind Man - Part 2

**I See Said the Blind Man – Part 2**

* * *

_A/N: Sorry for the out-of-orderness, but I'm going to continue with Foggy's missing scenes for the foreseeable future, starting with "Nelson v. Murdock" (1.10)._

* * *

Foggy wishes sometimes he and Matt could just get married and be done with it already. Because that would be easier, in a lot of ways. To tangle it, them, whatever it is they are, all up together like entwined legs in shared sheets. That would be something people could understand, at least, even if not everyone would approve. And although Foggy definitely likes women, has always liked them, he would gladly exchange them for a lifetime of beginning and ending each day with Matt because he's Matt, and Foggy doesn't want to know who he would be without him.

But it's not that simple. It never has been between them. Foggy doesn't have a word for what Matt is to him. Love is so commonplace. He loves his mother, after all. He was more than a little in love with Marci, and knows enough about himself to realize he could slip back into that role as easily as taking his next breath. He already loves Karen, and after seeing her save Matt, he's kind of even in love with Claire, despite the fact that the very idea of her pisses him off. Foggy loves this city and warm apple crisp and that first cold beer at the end of the day and the feeling he gets when he's set something wrong back right. He loves helping people and singing loudly in a hot shower and the smell of candles and lemon wood polish he associates with tagging along with Matt to Mass. Love is Foggy's nature and first instinct.

But Matt? Matt has always been something all together different.

Foggy sighs and stares down at the face he knows better than his own. Matt grimaces in pain as he unconsciously shifts position on the couch, so Foggy strokes the hair off his forehead and makes the soft shushing sound his mom always made when he was sick and swallows down conflicting urges to hug him and punch him in the face. Foggy runs his thumb against Matt's bottom lip, telling himself it's just because his lip is about the only place not bloodied or bruised, and knowing he can because Matt will never remember this. His touch causes the faintest ghost of a smile to lift the edges of Matt's lips, and Foggy hates him for it.

Stupid Claire and her whole "bodies don't lie" theory because, well, dammit. Just dammit.

Foggy wishes he were flexible enough to kick his own ass when he's done kicking Matt's. How could he have been this stupid? He should have recognized these lips on the news and in the paper because no one else has lips like Matt. Foggy has spent way too many hours, more than he will ever admit to anyone, staring at them, studying them. Foggy's memorized their charmingly deceptive curves and deciphered their minutest movements and translated the vast spectrum of smiles into the thoughts and feelings Matt never wants to speak of aloud.

He should have known these lips anywhere, even underneath a mask in grainy black and white.

Jesus, he has been so fucking blind.

It's still dark, or as dark as Matt's living room ever gets with the billboard's swirling mosaic of cherry blossoms that shifts as steadily as Foggy's emotions, but he knows it's nearing dawn. He can feel the hours that have passed since Claire left in the gritty weight of his eyelids and Matt's increasingly troubled sleep. The morphine's magic is wearing off, and even though he's been going over all the curses and questions in his head, which is useless, really, because there's no way he'll say it right even if he writes it down, Foggy doesn't want him to wake up. Not yet. He's not ready to face the truth: Matt, his Matt, is the masked Devil of Hell's Kitchen.

Matt groans again in his sleep, and Foggy presses a kiss to his forehead. He wonders, his lips lingering on Matt's still too-cool skin, if he looks as heartbroken as Claire when she did this. Foggy hates him for that too.

When Matt's quiet again, his breaths soft and even, Foggy sits back and tucks the blood-stained blanket up under his chin. Jesus. Now that the worst is over, his mind is starting to grasp how close he came to losing him. How many nights has Foggy almost lost him without even knowing that was a distinct possibility? How many times has Matt crawled home to an empty apartment bleeding and hurt and alone?

Foggy's once more overwhelmed with the urge to hit something, preferably part of Matt, so he returns to the chair before he does something he'll regret and wishes there was still a coffee table so he could kick up his feet.

Then again, he wishes lots of things. He wishes he'd gone to medical school so he would've known what to do when he realized it was Matt bleeding out in the living room. He wishes he'd thought to put something down on the floor because who knows how long it will take Matt to realize there's a blood stain in the rug that, despite Karen's words from the bar, doesn't look anything like spilled red wine. It looks exactly like blood. He slouches down into the chair and closes his eyes so he doesn't have to look at it, doesn't have to see the bloodied gauze he hasn't picked up or the mask he left crumpled on the floor like an accusation.

Foggy knows Matt can box, but this, this kung-foo insanity with the mask, is nothing like boxing. And Matt never said a word even though, under different circumstances, Matt has to know Foggy would think his blind best friend kicking ass like a super-hero was about the most awesome thing ever. Foggy considers all the times Matt has turned up tired and bruised in recent weeks. It started, he thinks, about the same time they left Landman and Zack. Matt's decision that seemed to come out of nowhere after how hard they'd both worked to get those jobs. Giving up all the money and prestige in Manhattan to do the right thing here at home. That's when Matt was consumed in the evenings with a sudden busyness and started limping into the office with bruised knuckles and split lips.

He doesn't think it's been going on that long.

Like the timing of it matters! Jesus. He shakes his head, his gaze wandering to the steps leading up to the roof. Matt's precious roof access. His insistence on having his own place. Of course. God, he's been such an idiot, and he hates Matt for it.

It was Matt, he suddenly realizes, who saved Karen from the hitman at her apartment. Matt broke the Union Allied story. Matt rescued that little boy on the news, the one the Russians had taken. He thinks to the other stories of hero-type stuff Karen's been telling him about, the stories circling on the streets, spreading like brush fire through the cafes and bars and laundromats, already with hints of urban legend about them: if you scream in the night in Hell's Kitchen, if you really need him, the masked Devil will hear you. He'll come.

Matt, his Matt, risks his life to save strangers.

Matt did not blow up those buildings. Foggy may not know much, but he knows that. He'll have to ask, of course, more to punish him for his damned secrets than anything else, but Foggy knows he didn't do it. He couldn't have hurt all those people. He couldn't have touched Foggy's stitches with such gentle, worried fingers if he was responsible.

He didn't do that.

And he didn't shoot those cops either. Not the one taken hostage, found bound and executed in the warehouse. Matt couldn't do that. Would never do that. And the other one, the one the news said was shot from a rooftop. No matter how Matt is able to do the things he does, whether it's by sound or smell or whatever, there's no way he can be a sniper and shoot someone from that far away when he's fucking blind. Foggy will have to ask about that too, but he already knows the answer. So there's that.

Which leaves the question of the cops in the alley. Matt, blind, unarmed, and handcuffed, took out three of them. Foggy saw the surveillance footage with his own eyes. That Matt beat those three cops unconscious was, as Matt himself would say if he were speaking to a jury, not in dispute. It was a matter of record. A fact, and a fact states what is, not moral judgment or what we think or how we feel. A fact just is.

Fact: Matt is the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.

Foggy gets up then, shakes his head, and paces in front of the couch. He hates this. All of this. He glares at Matt's bloodied body that Claire had to stitch back together before walking into the kitchen to splash cold water on his face.

He knows he's probably grasping at straws, but he has to believe there was a good reason Matt did what he did to those cops in the alley. Did whatever it is he did to get hurt the way he is. Because Matt is not a monster. He's not a murderer. He's not a terrorist or crazy or evil or any of the other things Foggy has accused since the coverage of the masked Devil first appeared. Matt is... Well, Matt is Matt. They are just that: a them. A shared existence. They are irreparably bound by more than something as simple as love or lust or loyalty.

At least Foggy thought they were. Before this. Before tonight.

* * *

_Matt didn't say anything when Foggy closed their door and leaned against it with a sigh. He just stood up and let Foggy stumble into his waiting arms. Foggy rested his head against Matt's shoulder and vowed he was not going to cry, not even a little bit._

_ "Foggy," Matt gently said._

_ "It's cool," he mumbled into Matt's neck. It was a stupid thing to say, really, given all the evidence to the contrary. He blinked back the hot tears that threatened to disobey his command to stay put and swallowed several times before he could add, "I'm taking a page out of your book, buddy: it just didn't work out."_

_ "Foggy," Matt said again, his voice as soft as a kiss and without any trace of pity. _

_ Foggy knew he could bawl his eyes out like a baby, or he could rage and throw things against the wall, or both, even, and that would be just fine. Matt would let him do whatever he needed to do, make sure he stayed safe while he was doing it, and be with him on the back-end with a smile and no judgment. Because that's what Matt did. That's who Matt was. _

_ Foggy closed his eyes and hid his face, breathing the comforting smell of Matt and pretending nothing else in the world existed except for them. Standing here like this felt as safe as coming home, and as long as it was dark and quiet, he could trick himself into believing they were the only survivors of the zombie apocalypse, and that would be a fine reality at the moment. Just them, Foggy and Matt. He didn't need or want anyone else anyway. Foggy rubbed his cheek against the stubble Matt's recently allowed to grow, surprised to find it softer than he imagined. He thought it would be prickly and coarse, as rough as his own unshaven face, but like everything else about Matt, it feels good and just right. _

_ " No big deal," he finally said when he trusted his voice. "Inevitable, really. Should have seen this coming. Marci was always out of my league." _

_ "Don't say that." Foggy felt Matt's words rumbling through his throat as much as he heard them, and he could happily crawl inside his skin and stay there forever. "It takes courage, Foggy, to trust people the way you do. To wear your heart on your sleeve for everyone to see."_

_ "It's not courage, Matt. It's just plain stupid, and I would stop if I could."_

_ "Never," Matt whispered. "I love that about you." His hand was gentle in Foggy's hair. "It's her loss, Foggy. You're the sweetest, bravest person I've ever known."_

_ Foggy pulled back, but only just enough so he could look into Matt's eyes. He was comforted by their not-quite gaze that still somehow managed to see him more clearly than anyone else ever had. Matt would be too much, Foggy thought, if those hazel eyes could focus, could harness all Matt's intensity into a look. If those eyes could light up when Matt smiled, it would surely be as blinding as looking directly at the sun. _

_ Foggy trusts Matt, but he's wrong. Foggy knows he's not brave because if he were, he'd close the seemingly insurmountable distance between them and just kiss him already. Just this once. So he'd stop wondering and know. _

_ "What can I do?" he asked, his smile more of a question than anything else. Not for the first time, Foggy wondered if Matt could somehow read his mind. "Tell me."_

_ Foggy wet his suddenly dry lips and had to remind himself to not breathe through his mouth right into Matt's face. He squeezed Matt's hip and thought, if only he were as brave as Matt believed, if he could just say what he wanted, Matt would bless him with the smoldering lover's smile Foggy's seen before, just never directed at him, and give him everything that followed it._

_ But what if this wasn't what he wanted at all? What if he was confused because he'd never felt so many feelings for anyone, and it's just easier to label it lust because Matt is, well, Matt? What if he ruined everything he wanted for the rest of his life because right now, in this moment, he wanted to know first-hand what Matt's kisses taste like?_

_ "Tell me," he said again, and Foggy bit his bottom lip to keep from blurting out exactly what he was thinking. _

_ He reached up and cupped Matt's cheek, a liberty he'd never taken before. Matt leaned into his touch and hummed a contented smiled. Foggy traced his dimple with his fingertip before weaving his fingers through the soft hair at Matt's temple. He tugged loose a single auburn strand from its hiding place in all the dark brown and imagined how handsome Matt would look in a few years, when gray was added to the mix. Lucky bastard. It'd just make him look even more distinguished, because he obviously didn't have enough distinction already._

_ He wanted Matt, but not like this. Foggy thought he was maybe, probably, making a terrible mistake, but he couldn't, wouldn't, risk not working out. Not for anything. Not even for the possibility of Matt himself. Because Foggy knew, more than anything, he wanted him forever. _

_ "Matt," Foggy finally said. _

_ His voice transformed Matt's smile into something new, a smile Foggy had never seen before. It was patient and resigned and a little bit sad. They would never speak of this, but Foggy knew he understood. The way Matt always understood. _

_ Matt nodded, just once, and leaned one more time into Foggy's hand before taking a step back. He pulled his glasses from his shirt pocket and slipped them on along with his easy, distant grin he wore outside their room like armor and shield._

* * *

Foggy splashes one more handful of water in his face, not closing his eyes against the sting, and turns off the tap, letting his face drip into Matt's sink.

He hates this. It'd be nice, he suddenly thinks, if Matt kept something in his apartment for non-blind people to read while they're waiting for morphine to wear off so they can begin their cross-examination of their best friend who's been lying since, well, probably forever. But all he could find, other than books he can't read, is the backlog of Braille Playboys Foggy subscribed to for him as a joke their first Christmas together. Matt had laughed and promised to give him a full review on the articles everyone always insisted were so well-written.

Jesus, he's a shitty friend. Because, fact: all this time, and he doesn't know how to read or write Braille. He can't leave Matt a note, or give him a birthday card, or send him a postcard if he ever went anywhere without him. If he'd been deaf, Foggy wouldn't have hesitated to learn sign language. He took Punjabi, for Christ's sake, for some stupid girl who wouldn't give him the time of day, but he never learned Braille for his best friend. He wishes he had. And he's back to wishing lots of things.

Fact: Matt didn't tell him he's the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.

But for the most part, Foggy hates to admit, he hasn't lied all that much. At least not directly. There was the taking out the trash incident Foggy knows of for sure, the night he drew up their future on a napkin and pledged to follow Matt where ever he led them. But after that, Matt never gave details. "It was my fault," he'd say when Foggy asked what had happened. Or "I should have been more careful." After they were officially partners, Matt actually, technically, hasn't lied except by omission, which surely has to count for something.

Foggy hates him for that too.

Because as soon as he started parsing his words even more carefully that usual, Foggy should've known, dammit, and Matt should have told him. And that's the rub. Selfish as it is to admit, although maybe after the past few hours playing nursemaid he's allowed a little selfishness, Foggy's hurt. He has a right to know. He has a right to worry and tell Matt how stupid and reckless and wrong he is. Not knowing until now, and only finding out on accident and not because Matt chose to tell him, trusted him enough to let him in on the secret, makes Foggy question everything else. He thought their them-ness was a constant, like gravity or pi, but, fact: they are a variable.

His eyes are burning with tears he refuses to let fall when he opens Matt's fridge. He'd meant to grab some juice, but when he sees the avocado sitting there, it's all he can do to keep from screaming and throwing it through a window.

Matt moans again on the couch, and Foggy glances over to see him shifting, his hand coming up over the back for leverage, like the idiot is trying to sit up. He hates this. He hates him, he really does.

Foggy grabs a beer because it's already been a long day even though it technically is just starting and people used to drink beer for breakfast and Matt is the fucking Devil of Hell's Kitchen and just, well, dammit.

"Wouldn't do that, if I were you," he warns before Matt can hurt himself even more.

Matt jumps and groans in pain, and Foggy realizes he thought he was alone. As if Foggy would leave him after he nearly died? He hates him for thinking, even for a second, that Foggy would ever abandon him. For not trusting him. For not telling him. Foggy hates that he didn't know.

Foggy slams the refrigerator door closed and walks back towards the sofa. Towards him. "Then again, maybe I would. The hell do I know about Matt Murdock?"

And isn't that the bitch of it, the crux of this entire revelation: not knowing Matt means Foggy doesn't know anything. Not anymore.


	7. I See Said the Blind Man - Part 3

**Hesitate (I See Said the Blind Man – Part 3)**

* * *

A/N: Portions of dialogue are lifted from the episode.

* * *

_"Are you okay?" Matt asked again as Foggy fished in his pocket for the key to their room. He'd been asking, with increasing frequency, all day, and Foggy was entirely too exhausted and achy to keep lying about it. But he was not getting sick. Not when they had so much to celebrate. _

_ "I'm already regretting letting you talk me into this haircut," he replied. "And I just spent more money in a single day than I ever have before. In my life. Combined," Foggy continued. "Other than that?" He pushed open their door and dropped his heavy load of packages and sacks onto his bed and tried not to gasp for air while the pain in his head made the room spin. "Dude, I'm walking on sunshine."_

_ Matt set down his purchases, pocketed his dark glasses, and walked over to Foggy._

_ "What the..." Foggy began when Matt reached up and pressed the back of his hand to Foggy's freshly shaved neck, just below his ear, concern written all over his face. "Don't give me the kicked puppy look, man. You know I can't take it."_

_ "You're burning up," he said. _

_ "You're just feeling the residual hotness from my new suits," Foggy insisted. "All five of them. Damn you and your expensive insistence on propriety and professionalism."_

_ "You bought four new suits," Matt corrected as he handed Foggy two Advils and a bottle of water. "I keep telling you, a blazer is not a suit."_

_ "Details. Besides, it's better. Two pairs of pants, not one. In case I spill."_

_ "Foggy." Matt rolled his eyes, but as soon as Foggy lowered the bottle from his lips, Matt was back at him, his hand on his forehead now. "I should have..." he muttered. _

_ "Not spent five times as much money as I did on the same number of clothes? Not gone so monochromatic with the new wardrobe? Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Sure, you said you need everything to match, but I may throw a pink shirt into the mix, just for fun."_

_ "Why didn't you say something?" Matt said, not reacting to Foggy's joke._

_ "No, man. Procedure stop. Don't be a buzzkill or rain on our parade."_

_ "We shouldn't have done this. Not when you're sick."_

_ "Matt, buddy, relax. Let me catalog our awesomeness because you seem to be forgetting. We just finished acing finals. We were both asked to be on Law Review in the fall. We won." Foggy couldn't resist pounding Matt's chest in triumph even though the movement made him question his ability to stay upright. "We won the moot court competition when most first-year teams don't even qualify to enter the damn thing. We shocked the hell out of everyone! You should have seen their faces. I wish you had seen their faces, man."_

_ "I wish I had too," Matt said. "But I will admit the gasps of horror were the stuff of legend."_

_ "We are the stuff of legend," Foggy said. "We just spent more than we will make this summer on fancy clothes for our internship at one of the best firms in the city. We are riding this wave, drinking from this cup of glory, and we are celebrating."_

_ "You're sick," Matt repeated._

_ "No." _

_ "Probably the flu."_

_ "I don't get the flu. I never get sick. I am not sick."_

_ Matt carefully cleared all the packages from Foggy's bed, and Foggy didn't resist when Matt guided him to it. As soon as his head hit the pillow, Foggy had to close his eyes and swallow back a groan. _

_ Jesus, this was not a drill. This was, unfortunately, happening. For-real, sick spins without all the fun memories of drinking to maybe balance it out and make it seem at least partially worth it._

_ "We're going out tonight," Foggy insisted even though he knew it couldn't happen as Matt took off his socks and shoes. "I have a grown up haircut for the first time since I've been grown up. I let an old man take a straight razor to my neck. It's a miracle I lived to tell the tale. I'm showing off, dammit. I look good. You would totally agree if you could see me now. I wish you could see me."_

_ Matt's fingers found the ends of Foggy's hair that, while much shorter than it was that morning, would still be considerably longer than anyone else's at the firm. Good thing he had the chops to pull it off, or he'd be forced to go all-out Young Republican, and wouldn't that just suck. _

_ "I like it," Matt quietly said. He fingered it off of Foggy's sweaty forehead and once again smoothed the back of his cool hand across Foggy's cheek. _

_ "Yeah?" Foggy hadn't realized how much he needed Matt's approval until he offered it._

_ "Yeah."_

_ Matt reached for Foggy's belt and started unbuckling it. He thought, for just a second, he should protest being treated like a child, or the fact that Matt was undressing him in his bed because, well, awkward on so many levels. But his hands were shaking and the room was still spinning and he didn't think he could find his own feet if he tried._

_ "I promise I'm not looking," Matt gently teased as he eased off Foggy's jeans._

_ "You're missing out. These are my good boxers." Matt smiled and helped Foggy get comfortable, pulling the blanket up to his chin. "You can still go," Foggy said, and his voice sounded very small and far away. "Without me."_

_ "Never."_

_ "You should. Celebrate."_

_ "I would rather be with you than anywhere else," Matt said. __"We will celebrate together. When you feel better."_

_ "I want to watch all the movies," Foggy slurred. "And eat all the Cheetos."_

_ "Absolutely."_

_ "And drink all the beer."_

_ "All of it," Matt agreed. Nothing had ever felt as good as Matt's hand resting on Foggy's fevered forehead. "Should I call your mom?"_

_ "Hell no. She'll hover."_

_ "I'm hovering."_

_ "S'different," Foggy sighed. "I want you to hover. I like it when you hover. You hover nicely. Everything about you is nice. Why are you so good to me?"_

_ "Do you even need to ask?"_

_ "Yeah. I do."_

_ As he drifted off in a fevered sleep, he thought he heard Matt whisper, "Because I love you," but he could never be sure if it was a dream._

* * *

"Just tell me one thing, Matt," Foggy says, trying to keep from yelling. "Are you even really blind?"

Matt doesn't answer, but his head dips down, and Foggy watches as he swallows. Matt's swallowing like maybe he wants to cry, but fuck him because he doesn't get to have tears. Not now, not when he's never cried before, not in all the years Foggy has known him.

"I never wanted to lie," he finally says. "Not to you."

"Yeah. Save it. We're so far past that."

"It's complicated," Matt quietly admits.

"No," Foggy insists. " It's really not. It's simple: can you see shit or not?"

Foggy has difficultly tracking the words when Matt begins explaining about the accident and the chemicals that blinded him. He talks about the hazy cloud that crept across his vision and blocked out the sky. How grateful he was the last thing he ever saw was a beautiful, blue sky. Foggy tries to understand as Matt describes waking up in the hospital hearing and smelling and feeling the impossible in a fiery world that is somehow the opposite of the perpetual darkness Foggy always imagined Matt lived in.

Foggy sips his beer, holding it in his mouth instead of swallowing right away to keep from screaming "Liar! You fucking liar!" as Matt's explaining about air density and temperature variations and the subtle vibrations that accompany movement. Matt matter of factly recites, in that staccato way he has of speaking, short bursts of simple words. Clipped fragments about sensitivity to smells and textures, as if Foggy hasn't lived with him and doesn't know that already.

Foggy thinks it sounds rehearsed. Memorized, even. Like maybe Matt's practiced telling him about impressionistic paintings of the world around him. Only he never said anything. Until now. Because he has to.

How the fuck does Matt even know what an impressionistic painting looks like anyway, since he was blinded when he was just a kid?

"So you can see?" Foggy finally says after Matt's shpeal, when the silence hums between them with angry tension Foggy can't take anymore.

"That's not," Matt begins. "You're not." He sighs, as if he somehow didn't forfeit his right to be put-out ages ago. Like maybe the second they met and he started bullshitting Foggy. "Are you even listening to what I'm saying?"

"Yeah. World on fire. I got it. But you can see, right?"

"In. In a manner of speaking."

He still sounds infuriatingly exasperated. Fuck him.

"No. No manner. How many fingers am I holding up?"

It's a stupid test. Matt knows Foggy. He knows exactly which finger even without air vibrations or whatever the fuck his spidey-senses are picking up that lets him see Foggy's fiery middle finger hovering in front of his face.

But Matt looks guilty as his tongue weakly wets his lips. His eyes still don't focus, and Foggy stares at them. Studies them. Tries to see how Matt can possibly see anything, impressionistic or not, when his pupils don't dilate and his eyes don't track or do anything but sit there and look absolutely un-seeing and wet and ashamed.

He really and truly is fucking blind, but he can see Foggy's finger, and he swallows again before whispering, "One."

The word hits Foggy like a fist to the gut. He knew it was coming. He knew. He isn't surprised. Of course Matt knew how many fingers. But he's somehow still shocked. Because Matt is blind, but he can see. He can fucking see. Has always been able to see.

Matt is the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.

Foggy has to sit down. He thinks there's a good chance he's going to embarrass himself and cry. Or maybe throw up. Or both. Then again, what's a little vomit when the floor's already covered with blood anyway?

"Foggy," Matt calmly says. "Breathe."

Even now, when he's the one who caused it, Matt is trying to look out for him. Fuck him for that too, dammit. If Foggy could not breathe, just to spite him, he would.

"But," Foggy finally stammers, trying to get his head around what he knows must be true. "But I've seen you," he begins, knowing Matt will know exactly what he means.

Because he's seen Matt catch his foot on the edge of something and go sprawling. He's seen his fingers search for small things, like his glasses or his keys, or large things, like the desk or the sofa. He's watched him memorize new spaces and need to orient himself in ones he already knows. He's seen him be absolutely fucking blind.

"It's hard," Matt says, sounding as weary and pained as he looks. "It's really, really hard. I have to concentrate. Or it doesn't make any sense. It's just." He sighs and looks up at the ceiling he can't see, like maybe what he's trying to say is hiding in the wooden beams. "I don't know how to explain."

"Try."

"If I'm not completely focused, it's... a nightmare," he says. "Overwhelming and distracting and just too... too much. So much. Of everything." Matt sighs again. "If I'm not concentrating, it's useless information that doesn't make sense."

"You already said that."

"I'm trying," Matt snaps. "I'm trying to do what you asked and explain."

"So what you're saying is that you're sometimes actually blind when you're around me?"

"I'm always blind, Foggy." Matt closes his eyes. "But yes," he whispers. "With you, I don't have to..."

He turns his head and not-looks at Foggy, the way he always has, as if he's somehow looking through Foggy's clothes and seeing every single bit of him uncovered and exposed, every inch and every thought and every secret. For all Foggy knows, maybe he can. Maybe Matt can see through walls or look into souls or read minds too. Nothing seems impossible anymore.

"I don't have to work so hard," Matt finally says. "I can relax. I know I'm safe when I'm with you."

"No," Foggy says, getting up from his chair to pace again. "You don't get to say that. Not now. Probably not ever."

"Foggy."

"No. Don't. Just." Foggy's so angry he punches the air in Matt's general direction and watches as Matt involuntarily flinches away. "Yeah," he says. "That right there. Fuck you, too."

"Foggy," Matt says again.

He says his name like it's a plea and a beg and promise, all rolled into one, and it's enough to make Foggy's eyes burn with tears again, and no. Just no. He is not going to feel badly because he is the one who's been lied to.

"Did you blow up those buildings? Shoot those cops?"

"Do you?" Matt swallows and winces. "Even need to ask that?"

He looks like the question Foggy already knows the answer to hurts even more than the blood-smeared stitches across his chest. Foggy knows he's being a dick, but he's glad it hurts. Because, well, just. Good.

"Yeah. I think I do."

Foggy sits down in time to see the tear shimmer in Matt's eye before it slides down his cheek. He clutches the arms of the chair and holds on for dear life, anything to stop him from falling to his knees and begging for forgiveness because he is being cruel, and as much as he hates Matt right now, he hates himself even more.

* * *

_ Hours had passed, or maybe days or weeks or a century, before he slowly drifted back to consciousness like coming up from the bottom of the deep end of the pool. He laid unmoving, his eyes still closed, aware that he was no longer sweating and shivering in his bed. He felt the warm weight of Matt pressed against him and heard his voice, soft and lyrical:_

_ "'__Master, what is it that I hear? Who are those people so defeated by their pain?' And he to me: 'This miserable way is taken by the sorry souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise. They now commingle with the coward angels, the company of those who were not rebels nor faithful to their God, but stood apart. The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened, have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them - even the wicked cannot glory in them.'"_

_"Matt," he finally said, opening his eyes in the dim quiet of their room and realizing he was in Matt's bed._

_"Welcome back," Matt said with a grin._

_ "What time is it?" Foggy asked. _

_ His voice sounded weak and scratchy, and Matt handed him a glass of cold water with a bendy straw stuck in it so Foggy didn't have to sit up to take a drink. It tasted so good he moaned just a little. Matt reached towards his clock and fumbled until his fingers found the button. _

_ "Nine seventeen pm," said the soft, mechanical voice. _

_ "So I was out for an entire day?" Foggy asked._

_ "Two." _

_ "I don't remember," Foggy muttered, handing the empty glass back to Matt. _

_ "You kept insisting you were dead and burning in Hell." _

_"That's on you, man. Damn Catholics."_

_ "I thought Dante was just the thing." Matt held up the book he was reading from._

_ "Dante? Jesus."_

_ "Virgil, actually."_

_ "Details." Foggy sighed and snuggled closer to Matt. "I like your sexy sheets, buddy."_

_ "So you've said. After your fever broke, I thought you'd be more comfortable if I cleaned you up and changed your bed," Matt explained. "And then you wouldn't leave."_

_ "Good plan," he agreed. "I'm never leaving. So what does it mean?"_

_ "What does what mean?"_

_ "That even the wicked cannot glory in them?"_

_ "Oh. Um." Matt looked at the closed book in his hand. "It's the part people mean when they say Dante said '__The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.'"_

_ "He didn't actually say that?"_

_ "No."_

_ "Well, either way, that's cheerful." Foggy shifted so he could see Matt's face in the dark. "Uh-oh. I know that look."_

_ "I'm not looking."_

_ "Dude, you're looking. What's wrong?"_

_ "I just." Matt sighed. "I just want my life to mean something. I want to help people."_

_ "Says the guy who spent the past two days playing nurse to my flu-infested ass?" Foggy asked._

_ "That's not what I meant." Matt shifted and looked away. "You're my best friend. Of course I would. I would do anything..." _

_ Matt sighed again, and Foggy was too tired to press for more. He just let himself relax into Matt's silk sheets and waited._

_ "I want to make a difference," Matt finally said. "Not just to the people I care about. But to people who need a break and haven't gotten many. People who can't go anywhere else. People who really need help. And I just don't know if Landman and Zack is the best way to do that."_

_ "Christ," Foggy muttered. "You and the guilt thing. It's killing me."_

_ "Foggy," he began._

_ "It's just an internship, Matt. An internship we worked really hard to get. We can check it out. Ride the shiny elevators. Wear our new suits. No matter where we work, we can help people. We don't have to decide anything right away."_

_ "You're right."_

_ "Of course I'm right," Foggy agreed. "Sure, it's probably the fever talking, but that doesn't mean it's wrong."_

_ "Foggy," Matt gently chided._

_ "'Nough talking. Keep reading."_

_ "I have to talk to read."_

_ "You know what I mean," Foggy sighed as he settled his head against Matt's shoulder. "You always know exactly what I mean."_

* * *

"Wait." Foggy stands quite still and stares at Matt. "Are you telling me that, since I've known you, anytime I wasn't telling the truth, you knew?"

Matt's face is all the answer Foggy needs.

Jesus.

Foggy's not a liar, not about the things that matter. Mostly. But no one tells the truth all the time. Foggy thinks of all the times he stared at Matt because he knew Matt couldn't see him doing it. All the times he said everything was fine when it wasn't. When he lied about the things he did with girls on dates. When he said he had enough money or enough to eat or wasn't tired or felt confident in an answer.

He always knew Matt knew him better than he knew Matt. He never harbored delusions about that. Matt obviously wanted it that way, and Foggy accepted it as the price of being friends. But this? This is a whole new level of unlevel playing field. This is Foggy not having a moment's privacy since Matt walked into their room all those years ago.

"And what?" Foggy finally asks. "You just. Played along?"

Matt has the decency to look ashamed. "Basically."

"If you weren't half dead I would kick your ass, Murdock." Foggy rushes the couch and points an accusing finger he knows Matt can see right in his face. Fuck him because he knows his breath stinks too. "Am I lying about that?"

Matt eyes are wet with tears when he softly replies, "No."

"Was anything ever real with us?"

"Foggy," Matt whispers. "Please. I didn't mean." He swallows. "I never wanted."

"To fucking lie to me? To invade my privacy? To make me question everything I thought I knew to be true? What? What exactly didn't you mean or want?"

Matt sniffs and wipes his cheek with the back of his hand. Foggy's heart breaks just a little knowing he's the cause, and then he realizes that Matt probably can tell. Probably knows all about his stupid, fucking heart, and that just pisses him off all over again.

"At first, I wasn't going to tell you," Matt quietly admits. "Because I never told anyone. But then."

He shrugs, wincing because he probably just pulled out stitches somewhere because a ninja almost killed him last night. Because he's blind but he's also the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.

Jesus.

"Then what?" Foggy finally asks.

"You're you," he simply says, blinking back fresh tears. "You're you, Foggy Nelson, but by then, I didn't know what to say. Because you'd think I'd lied. And I couldn't." Matt closes his eyes and lets his head rest on the back of the couch. "I couldn't lose you. So I just."

"Kept lying?"

"Yeah," Matt has the decency to agree. "I intentionally don't focus on you. Not like that. Not unless I think something's wrong and I can help. I try to let you have your secrets."

"Like you have yours?"

"I never asked for this," Matt snaps. "For any of it. It happened. It just fucking happened."

"Like the ninja-guy just happened?" Foggy asks. "Like you running around in a mask just happened?"

Matt glares at him but doesn't say anything, and Foggy isn't ready to deal with all the details of Matt's extracurricular activities. He doesn't want to think about Wilson Fisk blowing up their neighborhood or sending a fucking ninja to kill Matt. Because Matt is the fucking Devil of Hell's Kitchen. Or that Matt somehow knows how to not get killed by a ninja because an old blind man named Stick taught him how to fight. Or the fact that Karen called Matt first because something tells him Karen will always call Matt first. And then Foggy lied instead of telling her Matt was nearly killed by a ninja. And Matt knew he was lying because he could hear Foggy's heartbeat from across the room. He has always known when Foggy was lying. He has always been able to hear Foggy's heart.

He can't think about this.

The list of things he doesn't want to think about right now is long and distinguished, so he wanders into the kitchen and grabs another bottle of water for Matt. He's tempted to throw it at the back of his head, just to see what would happen. Would he sense it coming and protect himself? Foggy loiters by the fridge, hefting the weight in his hand, and wonders how much he would hurt him if what he said was true, that he doesn't try not to be blind around Foggy.

It's heavy for how small it is. Would probably cause a concussion. Maybe break open Matt's thick skull and force Foggy to call for Claire for more stitches. Unless he caught it first, which Foggy thinks would somehow be worse than him getting hit with it.

In the end, Foggy hands over the water like a normal person because he doesn't want to risk it, any of it, and pulls out his phone and texts Claire.

'He's awake. Will live to tell the tale. I've got this.'

She looked so tired and so sad, and Foggy knew she spent the night working, not sitting around like he did. She should go home, if she wants. Go to bed. No sense in everyone Matt knows being miserable because he's a lying sack of shit human lie detector asshole.

'Make sure he drinks a lot of water,' she texts back. 'And eats. I'll come if he needs me.'

Of course she will.

Foggy wants to be shitty back. Say something mean and hurtful because everyone always loves Matt more than Matt loves them, but it's not her fault. She seems nice, and she saved Matt's life, and Foggy thinks she's hurting already, in her own way. So he thanks her and adds Hotty McBurner phone to the list of things he doesn't want to think about.

Matt is just sitting there on the sofa, silently sipping his water and looking miserable, so Foggy goes back to the kitchen and starts banging around, looking for something to feed him. His kitchen has even less food than Foggy's, which is really saying something. He's eaten relish straight from the jar because sometimes that happens, but he figures Matt needs something with more substance to it. Probably protein and iron.

In the end, he calls a nearby place Matt likes that delivers. Two spinach salads, one black-and-blue with extra steak and one salmon. Beet salad. Spinach quiche. Oatmeal with apples, pecans, and dates. A couple greek yogurt parfaits. He adds six hard boiled eggs and freshly ground peanut butter and a six-pack of beer as an afterthought.

He's not paying for all this shit when it arrives.

"You hate salad," Matt quietly points out.

"They're for you."

"Thanks."

"Whatever," Foggy mutters on his way to the bathroom. "If you had fucking food, I'd cook for you." He lets the water run hot and wets a washcloth. He hands it, still steaming, to Matt. "You have blood all over."

"Thanks," Matt says again before wiping his face and neck.

Foggy rinses it when he's done and finds a zippered hoodie and a thick pair of socks. Standing in Matt's bedroom, he watches Matt sit on the sofa, not-looking at him. The socks are a lot softer than a water bottle.

He throws the rolled socks as hard as he can at Matt's head. At the last second, just before they hit him, Matt jerks to the side to avoid them. He groans and clutches his side, the movement obviously not the best thing for a newly stitched-together abdominal wound.

"Shit. Sorry," Foggy says, retrieving the socks from the other side of the sofa. "I wanted to see what you would do."

"What was that?" Matt asks as he gingerly pulls on the hoodie.

"Socks," Foggy says, handing them to Matt.

"Should have let them hit me."

"Yeah. Probably."

"You done with that now?" Matt asks.

"Probably not," Foggy honestly answers.

Matt nods. "Okay."


End file.
